This is not about reli­gion. Its about tools for pho­tog­raphy. So you choose your tools by the way they fit your needs, your style and your approach to pho­tog­raphy. Its clear that the top tier camera and lens sys­tems are excel­lent and each is more than capable of cap­turing the images I want to, and am able to, cap­ture. So why, then, do I shoot with Canon?

I started in with DSLRs using a Nikon D70 and I liked it very much and learned a lot about what dig­ital pho­tog­raphy could be with a DSLR instead of a point-and-shoot. But, like a lot of camera gear, it was stolen on a vaca­tion (thank­fully I had trans­fered the CF card con­tents to my PowerBook). That gave me the oppor­tu­nity to recon­sider what hard­ware I wanted, but now with the added learning of some time behind a DSLR.

A key learning for me was that its the lenses that makes the system. And Canon has the widest range of lenses, and most impor­tantly to me, the widest range of Image Stabilized lenses. Maybe its my steadi­ness (or lack thereof) or the fact that I like nat­ural light pho­tog­raphy, but having a set of Canon IS lenses works for me. Truth be told, I like the user inter­face of the Nikon cam­eras better.

My first Canon DSLR was an XT 350 together with the 17-85mm IS and the 70-300mm IS. The lenses were great, but the size of the camera and its inter­face were bad enough that I was afraid I had made the wrong choice. But I upgraded to a Canon 30D and have not looked back — espe­cially since I’ve replaced the 17-85mm IS with the excel­lent 17-55mm 2.8 IS.