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Articles and Reviews
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Goodness gracious, it seems that in recent times Nikon has taken a bit of a beating on some forums and even the stalwart Thom Hogan has come out with some comments about what ills Nikon these days. All so soon after basking in the glory of announcing a next generation D-SLR and a slew of lenses for the digital and film photographer. What gives? Of all the comments Thom Hogan’s are the most lucid (since “discovering” who Thom Hogan is, his writings have never been less than excellent and his Nikon reviews set the standard for fair and concise reporting – I wish I could write as well as he does, hell, more importantly, I wish I could photograph like he does J. Hogan states that there is nothing inherently wrong with Nikon products and indicates that Nikon appears to be too engineering oriented, as in designing and producing a great product and then letting it sell itself, as contrasted to Canon and its penchant for designing good products and then having great marketing to support them. Hogan bemoans the lack of focus and consistency of Nikon and certainly he would know much more about the company than the average Nikon user given his livelihood of writing books about Nikon equipment. I would certainly consider his comments above the general noise of other Nikon users (myself included J Elsewhere and we see different comments with the common thread being that there is some concern that Nikon does not have enough focus to really compete against Canon, it’s only competitor in the professional world so followed by amateur photographers for trends. A pattern is revealed in terms of how the companies compete against one another:
Although Nikon appears to be dominant in certain professional segments such as wildlife and nature, Canon appears to be dominant among the news and sports world. However, with each passing year that Nikon does not announce that it is revamping its telephoto lineup with VR lens motors, more and more nature and wildlife pros and amateurs are moving to Canon for their big IS lenses. From what I can gather, Nikon is number 2 for the film market, and at this time is number 1 in the digital SLR market with a reputed 60% market share. Canon is breathing down Nikon’s neck and with aggressive moves, such as pricing the EOS 10D at US $1500 and introducing a sub US $1000 EOS 300D, it is forcing Nikon to react. Perhaps that is what pains some Nikon users is that Nikon has seemed more reactionary than revolutionary and that Nikon Corp. seems happy to give up market leadership to its primary rival after some moments at the top. Putting on my rose-colored glasses, I think of these comments (harsh at times) as being actually supportive of Nikon, in that these users want Nikon to thrive and continue to offer great products. Now of course, there are always trollers lurking about who could care less about Nikon’s well-being, and merely harp on Canon being the ultimate to provoke a response and a virtual fight. Some
of the more silly comments I’ve seen are that Nikon products are
far more expensive than their Canon counterparts. Nonsense! While
there are certainly going to be some products that will be higher
than Canon, generally, I see little of the sort, at least up here
in
Consider
some examples (prices taken from Camera
Consider too that some jewels of the Canon lens range often used to beat Nikon users’ heads over Canon preeminence have been discontinued (the 50mm f1 and 200mm f1.8). It’s fine and dandy to have some prestige lenses, but prestige lenses don’t sell and do nothing for the company’s bottom line and Canon has not become the large and successful company that it is now by continuing to produce albatross lenses for any length of time, no matter how good they may be. I do not believe Nikon is any danger of becoming an also-ran. Ten years ago, the chances of that happening would have been stronger given the Canon EOS 1n versus Nikon F4 battles of the day along with USM and IS coming to the fore. Today, certainly Canon has some enviable products and a strong and consistent system integration of products. Nikon is making moves to solidify the consistency of its products; however, it faces the brunt of users who will condemn it for any moves it makes to modernize the products at the expense of manual lens and camera compatibility. These people seem to believe that it is their birthright as Nikon users to enjoy the ability to mount a 30-year old lens onto a modern day camera without compatibility issues. There also seems to be a belief that this decision by Nikon amounts to nothing more than a nickel and diming exercise to “cripple” modern cameras to not be able to mount said 30-year old lens. Since I’m not an old time manual focus Nikon user, I cannot sympathize about the slow dying of 50 years of compatibility because I don’t have 20, 30, 40, 50 year old lenses and cameras. I live in the modern world and I’m a product of my times that sees 35mm for what it is, a convenience medium. I don’t mix my apples and oranges except on the fruit plate. Want to use a manual focus camera then use a manual focus lens or appropriate auto focus one ‘cause Nikon has plenty of those covering the whole gamut of focal lengths. I’m not going to get hung up on not being able to mount an old AI or AIS lens onto my D100. A digital camera has some slightly different needs from the lenses than do film cameras and I’d like to maximize that quality by using appropriately suitable and modern lenses. But then I’m not the type that’s beholden to old technology otherwise I may as well be typing this up on MS Works, via MS-DOS 3 on the 1989 vintage 8 MHz, XT class PC that I bought for university that had a whopping 20 MB hard drive and a tiny 13 inch monochrome monitor. Hell, why not find the ancient Commodore Vic 20 that I played with as a kid? This does not mean taking disposable consumerism to the extreme of buying and selling whenever a new product comes out; however, it does mean that when something good comes along that offers good solutions to problems of the past, I’ll adopt it. This is all just my way of saying, let’s calm down and let the companies duke it out as they see fit to earn our spending dollars, we can enjoy the new tools brought out for our benefit. But let us not get overworked about the change of technology and how it supposedly threatens what is or was very comfortable to us. Although no longer a dominant part of its market, Nikon is still making a manual focus camera and a number of manual focus lenses and compatible auto focus lenses. These people are not being left out in the lurch. Let us also not get overworked about what Canon is doing because it has its own agenda to follow and Nikon has its too. It’s a human nature process for members of both camps to look across the river and see what the other is doing, but in the end, it’s really irrelevant. Is a Nikon shooter with an F5 or F100 with a complement of Nikkors really going to sell off just because Canon has a digital Rebel available now? Is a Canon 1D shooter really going to sell off because Nikon has a nifty D2H body coming soon (a more likely occurrence, but still silly). Fellow Nikon users, let’s have a little gravitas. |
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Edwin's
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Woe is Nikon? Hardly!