The Mark of a Man

Or: "The life-changing decisions of an aspiring photographer."

My blogging has been somewhat slow lately.  That's because what would usually be my blogging energy has been going into research some may consider disproportionately deep considering the subject matter.

I've been a user of high-end consumer cameras for a long time now, and while I really love photography, lately I've noticed myself making less time for it because I feel frustrated by my equipment (or lack thereof).  Though the equipment doesn't help you frame a shot, or indeed provide the opportunity, there are many aspects to the creative process simply not possible with consumer-grade equipment regardless of the number of manual settings available.

I just need better glass, and lots of it.

So, wanting to rekindle my zeal for photography, and with a desire to employ principles well beyond my equipment, I found myself on a magical mystery tour of self-discovery.  I was on a journey toward discovering what kind of man I really am.  A Canon man, or a Nikon man.

For some this journey begins and ends by accident, but for those forced to be more deliberate about it, there are two possible ways to enter the market.  I think a lot of aspiring photographers fall into the trap of deciding which camera they want.  Oh the poor fools and their naiveté.  Buying your first expensive lens is the equivalent of signing a contract with an expensive exit clause, so one should choose their first SLR with great care.

No matter how much money you spend on a camera body, you can always spend more on even a single lens.  So by the time you've collected a few of them, the investment in your camera is negligible, which is a good thing because it provides at least a plausible scenario to delude yourself with.  Having an excuse to throw away thousands of dollars every couple of years on new bodies really comes in handy.

Your choice of a Nikon body or a Canon one isn't going to make a huge percepitble difference to your noise levels at high ISO, nor will you really shed tears over the difference between 10 megapixels and 12 megapixels, and its not like one company employs three-fingered aliens to test the ergonomics, so there isn't going to be a big issue there either.

All of the shortcomings one brand has over another -- as they leapfrog each other with new versions -- eventually blur into insignificance.  As I write this, Nikon's para-professional offerings have an LCD screen which is several times the resolution offered by comparable Canon gear.  Next year it'll be something different, so while I might be tempted to upgrade for a feature like that, what the hell am I going to do with all those perfectly good and stupidly expensive lenses I'm going to end up with?

...I'm going to keep them, of course, which effectively locks me into a brand, so it makes sense to choose my lenses extremely carefully, and then just get a body to stick on the end of them, right?...  Right.

Choosing a lens requires an appreciation for the subject and the situations one is likely to encounter while shooting said subject.  In other words, you need to have some understanding of what you like to shoot and from where you like to shoot it.  Once you establish the type of lens you require for that, then its a case of researching cost vs optical performance for your chosen lens format in a variety of mounts.

If you can fall in love with a lens which is exactly right for your favourite type of shot, the rest falls into place suprisingly easily.  Adding spice to your life with additional lenses isn't going to be a problem, and they don't need to be exactly perfect for you as long as you have that one sexy beast of a lens which always makes you tingle in your underpants.

That lens will dictate the mount, and the mount will dictate whether you're about to be a Canon person, or a Nikon person.

As I've been reading about things like mechanical noise, auto-focus speed, optical engineering and flexibility, I've come to believe that Canon simply make more lenses you can fall in love with.  That doesn't make it impossible to be a Nikon person, I just think it explains why more people are Canon people.  That wasn't really an influencing factor for me, as I expect I'll end up with no more than 3 really awesome lenses for the forseeable future and only one which really turns me on, so I remained open to being a Nikon guy, until I found myself repeatedly gravitating to one particular product.

This lens is almost everything I want.  Very respectable optics, fast and accurate auto-focus, very pretty 'bokeh' and great low-light performance coupled with a short focal distance even at full extension.  On a 'crop body' with a factor of 1.6 (such as the 40D), it turns into a respectable 112-320mm telephoto.  This is a lens which is certainly going to spend most of its life attached to my camera.

Given the popularity and the rave reviews of this lens, the choice is pretty obvious.  Of course Canon aren't the only company to make a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom.  The competitive Nikkor product is of extremely high quality and about the same price, but reading about both leads me to choose the Canon, and therefore a Canon body to go with.

But there are other reasons to be a Canon guy.

Unlike the 70-200mm f/2.8, Canon's lineup of Tilt-Shift lenses has no parallel.  They offer amazing creative flexibility and while they're nobody's first lens, I think I'd be silly to turn my back on the benefits to both to depth of field and to architectural photography that TS-E lenses offer -- especially since I really enjoy cityscapes.  It's likely that I'll wait until I own a full-frame camera to purchase one of these, but as I'll be collecting other lenses until then, it seems a wise choice to start collecting Canon ones.  For me, this lineup alone makes it worth ignoring Nikon.

That's the reason I'm going to be a Canon guy.

It's sheer dumb luck and good fortune for me that the Canon EF mount is extremely flexible, allowing Nikon F mount, Olympus OM and Leica R lenses etc, to be fitted via a simple (glass-free) adapter.  It's that dumb luck that lets me choose a favourite lens, but still retain the option of fitting pretty much whatever I want.

Given that, it's pretty difficult for me to argue against buying a Canon body.  As far as I'm concerned, it's a devastatingly clear victory for Canon.