What we are seeing here is a concerted effort by Nikon to deal with the big gaps in the Nikon range that used to make it difficult to take Nikon as a serious alternative.
Let's go back two years. (Two years isn't long!) At that time, if you were serious about photography and considering which brand to go with - and especially if you had a photographic specialty in mind - you had to look at the respective ranges and see those huge gaps:
* High-end, high-res studio camera: NO
* Very fast sport camera: NO
* Full-frame camera: NO
* full range of modern image stabilised super telephoto lenses: NO
* tilt-shift lenses: NO
Nikon still don't have a studio camera in the class of the Canon 1Ds line, nor an affordable semi-pro full-frame camera like the Canon 5D, but they now have (or soon will have) products filling all the other gaps I listed. That's an amazing burst of productivity from the Nikon design department, and probably needs a matching effort from their production engineering team. In just a couple of years - well, let's say three years, as not all of these products are actually available in quantity yet - Nikon have pretty much eliminated the weaknesses that consigned them to also-ran status in many fields.
When I got my first digital SLR, Canon was pretty much the only sensible choice. As a wildlife photographer, I needed to know that the system I was buying into had the ability to grow with me, that (for example) when I wanted to step up from my 100-400 to a 500/4, there was one available. Canon offered that, Nikon didn't. (Minolta and Pentax and Oly didn't even try, at least not to speak of.)
But if I was starting out today, I would have to seriously consider going with the Nikon system. I might wind up going Canon anyway, or might not - the point is, as of now there is a choice.
hmmm .... if Canon would follow suit and make an equivalent to the one Nikon product I really lust after .... I'd be cured of my 200-400 VR envy.
|