My first dig­ital SLR was a Nikon D70 that suf­fered a mishap and had to be replaced. I had done a lot of research into dig­ital SLRs and had decided on the Nikon and I liked it just fine. But when it came time to replace it, I did more research and this time on lenses. At the time only Canon had the EF-S 15–85 IS and EF 70–300 IS lenses—both were rea­son­ably priced and I wanted IS. Plus, I had a friend who shot Canon and was an excel­lent semi-Pro, so I could learn specifics from him and even borrow lenses from time to time.

The first Canon I owned was a 350D and I really didn’t like the con­trols and the small size of the body. Sticking with it, I later upgraded to a Canon 30D which I liked much better. And then came a 50D and finally a 7D (which is a won­derful camera). Along the way came lenses and even the fab­u­lous Canon EF 70–200 f/2.8L IS. So I was pretty deep in the glass and didn’t want to take the mon­e­tary loss in selling and switching.

But all along I remem­bered how the D70 han­dled. And I kept up with the advances in the Nikon world by reading web news and reviews. Once I started get­ting more advanced with my off camera flash work, I learned more about how the Nikon flash system worked (par­tic­u­larly the SB-900) com­pared to the 580EXs I was shooting. Its a highly per­sonal thing, but the Nikon approach to pho­tog­raphy just seems to fit me better.

So the short of it is that I con­tacted Adorama’s used camera depart­ment for a quote on my Canon gear and decided to swallow hard and make the switch. Now in hand is the Nikon D300s with the MB-D10 bat­tery grip, two SB-900s, the AF-S DX 18–200 VRII (a great walk-around lens), the won­derful AF-S 70–200 f/2.8 VRII, the new-ish AF-S 100 VR Micro and the Sigma DC 17–50 f/2.8 OS. As you can see, I still love the IS/VR/OS lenses. And that’s the only reason I did not get the Nikon AF-S DX 17–55 f/2.8.

That’s a pretty big switch. And its not because Canon is a poor system—quite the con­trary, its first class stuff. The auto-focus system of the Canon 7D is tremen­dous and clears Canon of all the bad press and bad reviews of their auto-focus. And what can you say bad about the EF 70–200 f/2.8L IS? So why did I do it?

It was a very sub­jec­tive call. For me, the way Nikon uses switches for such things as metering and auto-focus modes just “feels” better than Canon’s button-and-dial approach. Their menu struc­ture makes sense to me. And iTTL makes better flash expo­sures for me (not to men­tion the fact that the redesigned user inter­face on the SB-900 is very easy to use).

There are, of course, tech­nical details that differ. For the most part, its a trade off—the D300s has 51 auto-focus points to the 7D’s 19, but the 7D shoots at 8 fps while the D300s does only 6 (unless you get a spe­cial bat­tery and the bat­tery grip), the D7 has 16 megapixels to the Nikon’s 12, but the D300s has dual memory card slots, and on and on.

You’ll note that none of this has any­thing to do with video. I don’t do video.

Lots of my lighting gear will work with either system, so at least I avoided the costs of changing out some­thing. My RadioPoppers just needed new plastic mounting brackets, but the light stands, Honl light mod­i­fiers, Westcott equip­ment and mis­cel­la­neous hard­ware all still works.

I have my eye on a few more things, once I recover from the ini­tial expense. I’d like another SB-900 and the SU-800 wire­less flash com­mander (which will make my RadioPoppers that much more capable). And I’ll be keeping my eye out to see when, or if, Nikon adds VR to their AF-S DX 17–55 f/2.8.

In the end, the camera does not take the pic­ture, the pho­tog­ra­pher does. Either system will make breath­taking photographs—just scout through 500px and see who shoots what with which system. Or better yet, see if you can guess which system was used to take which pic­ture. Good luck with that!