In 2010, Sortable, a Waterloo-based startup company, launched Snapsort.com, devoted to helping consumers find the right camera for them. Sortable surveyed more than 275,000 people over a six month period and found that: In the ever-growing market for cameras, many brands have joined the war to become the best product. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, Fujifilm and Olympus are among the many companies vying to come out on top. However, according to consumers, it is Canon that is winning the camera war. The survey shows that 33% of consumers favour Canon to the competition, among the favourite types being the Canon T2i, T3i, 7D, the new 5D Mark III the Powershot S95 and the SX40. Trailing close in second place is Nikon, favoured by 27% of consumers. Nikon has produced many popular brands such as the D5100, D7000 and D3100 DSLRs, the Coolpix P500 and S9100.

Today, not only do consumers have multiple camera brands that they can choose from, but they also have the option of choosing a type of camera that is right for them. During Sortable’s research, they found that consumers’ favourite types of cameras are DSLR’s and Point and Shoots. DSLRs are versatile cameras with interchangeable lenses that are traditionally used by professional photographers, but are becoming increasingly more popular among entry level users. In contrast, Point and Shoots allow the everyday person to quickly and easily capture the photos they want, without having to make many adjustments. It’s not surprising that these two types come out on top. What is really surprising is the surge in popularity of the Mirrorless cameras. A relatively new technology, Mirrorless cameras stuff a DSLR size sensor into a small portable package, with interchangeable lenses for greater flexibility. Canon has yet to enter the Mirrorless market, and Nikon has just entered, with the Nikon V1 and J1. As this type of camera becomes more popular, Canon and Nikon will have to step up their game in order to keep their market share in comparison to Sony, Panasonic and Olympus, who have grabbed the early lead in this Mirrorless market.

So, how do you know which camera is right for you? Well, you can take the advice of other consumers and of your family and friends, but ultimately, the choice is yours. Each brand of camera and each type all have their perks and flaws. It’s up to you to find your camera (and a little help from Snapsort and Sortable might be handy). Here, in 2012, our world has certainly come a long way since Zahn’s initial camera concepts.

Canon and Nikon think we need $6,000 cameras but do we really? - by Canon

Apparently Canon and Nikon think the photography world is ready to trade in their car for a new camera and set of lenses. That’s just about what a Nikon D4 or Canon 1-DX and a set of lenses will set you back. A camera or a car? Not a tough choice for most people.

It’s not at all certain these two particular cameras were aimed specifically at still photographers anyway. Both cameras boast impressive video specs and perhaps the real targets are filmmakers, to whom a $6,000 camera body is a relative bargain. Still, when you start with a $6K body and add lenses, rails, flags, follow focus, and a monitor it starts getting the price up near real digital film cameras like the Sony PMW-F3L.

“While you would still have to add the lenses, the price difference on a budget film production is not that significant compared to what you gain with features like Genlock, Timecode, and 10 bit 4:2:2 HD-SDI output,” says Bill Pryor, a Kansas City commercial video producer who shoots most of his footage on the Canon 5D MK II.

Footage from Canon 5D MK IIs integrates seamlessly with 35mm film in Captain America - via Canon

When shots from Canon 5D MK IIs can be seamlessly integrated with 35mm film in movies like Captain America, it begs the question of just how much more quality do filmmakers really require?

For years photographers were spoiled as technology and competition drove prices down and to see the trend reversed so abruptly on the flagship products of both lines will be an interesting trend to watch. The question it begs for photographers centers around the compelling value proposition that would make the EOS-1DX the definitive choice over a Canon 5D MK II?

Certainly the flagship cameras have better low light performance. If you’re a full-time professional sports photographer shooting in highly variable lighting conditions inside sports arenas, perhaps the price tag is worth it. I might argue the Nikon D700 and Canon 5D MK II are fairly capable low light shooters themselves, but the D4 and 1DX push low light performance to new levels.

I could also see a National Geographic photographer on assignment someplace near the end of the world needing both the superior weather sealing and low light performance, which cuts down on the amount of lighting gear they have to carry. In places where every slot in an equipment bag is a precious commodity, then the extra $4,000 for a camera body is outweighed by other factors.

Is what's inside a Nikon D4 really justify the price tag?

Overall, I’m really working to find justification for the added expense and just can’t see it. You can buy two D700’s for the price of a D4 and carry a spare body. Instead of a 1DX tricked out for filmmaking, get two 5D MK IIs and use one for covering shots.

It’ll be interesting to see if the photography world proves me wrong and demonstrates there’s a serious market for $6,000 cameras, but I’m not holding my breath.

Compare:

Nikon D700 vs D4

Nikon D700 vs Canon 5D MK II

Nikon D700 vs Canon 1DX

Canon 5D MK II vs 1D x

Whether Mamiya Leaf is combing for efficiency or clinging together for survival is yet to be seen

Phase One A/S announced today that Mamiya Imaging and Leaf Imaging would be merged into Mamiya Leaf Imaging. The merged company will enter into a licensing agreement with Kodak, which likely means their sensors and image processing will be under the hood of the merged brand.

Whether medium format is merging to optimize service and support as the company claims in their press release, or if the companies are clinging together for survival in the face of rapidly improving DSLR competitors, remains to be seen. Right now it’s all sunshine and lollipops from Phase One. From the press release:

“We’re pleased to be part of this effort. The combination of products brings together the best in medium format photography delivered with service and options to expand the capabilities of professional photographers,” says Henrik Hakonsson, President of Phase One.

The real question is will photographers feel compelled to purchase an 80-megapixel Mamiya Phase One combination which, at over $40,000, is more than the cost of a shiny new BMW sedan. Compare that to Nikon’s new D4, which is just under $6,000.

Megapixels, Shemgapixels

This is where I have to remind people that comparing cameras by their megapixel rating is like my wife picking a new car because she likes the color. The number of megapixels has very little to do with the quality of the final image. Color, tone and sharpness will have far more sway over the quality of the final image, one of the reasons the highest rated cameras are all over the road when it comes to the megapixel rating of the sensor.

The difference in megapixels does effect the resolution of the final image, but even that is a geometric comparison and not a linear scale. In order to really notice a difference in resolution, you have to nearly double the chip size. Doubling the chip size quadruples the number of megapixels.

That’s why comparing the Canon T3i to the Nikon D5100 just on megapixels would be a mistake. While the T3i boasts a 17.9-megapixel chip and the D5100 a 16.1-megapixel chip, the difference is meaningless. Overall the D5100 is generally considered the superior camera.

Which brings us back to megapixels in the digital age and the continued quest of medium format to stay relevant in a camera market where DSLRs are producing incredible quality at a price point that’s a fraction of what you’d pay for a medium format camera.

Another factor impacting the debate is the march of software. In the old days of digital photography, like five or ten years ago, trying to scale low-resolution bitmap images, like JPEGs, was quite hard and most often the blow ups looked like doody.

Today software is much better at scaling JPEG images and you can, for all intents and purposes, scale them indefinitely with little loss in quality.

It should be interesting to see if medium format can find a way to stay relevant in the digital market, or we’ll see the medium format camera go the way of Kodak.

The Nikon D7000 gets very high marks in user satisfaction

The big names in the photography business are there for a reason and that reason is because they have consistently produced some of the best cameras in the history of photography. All the same, the question I get a surprising number of times is, “What is the best camera on the market?” That’s not a question anyone can answer. Best in what terms? Best for studio work? Best in a combat zone? Best family camera? Best value for the money? Best for a professional? Best for a beginner? There are different answers for all of those questions and sometimes a different answer between one person and the next.

A quick look around at 10 camera web sites will yield 10 different rankings with a bit of overlap. With so much variation in the rankings, how do you figure out which camera is right for you?

A survey by PC World does present some broad conclusions. An aggregate of other rankings, including here at  Snapsort, does outline some interesting trends.

Canon and Nikon Are The Big Kids On The Block

The data taken together supports the perhaps obvious conclusion that Canon and Nikon are the big two, though the reasons for their popularity are quite different and challengers are evolving. Canon cameras are rated as being more reliable, with Nikon coming in 5th in the reliability survey, behind Canon, GE, Panasonic and Casio. Seriously, if you’re losing to Casio in reliability, maybe you need take a hard look at your QA/QC methodology.

Nikon ranks number one when it comes to owner satisfaction with their camera features, just edging out Canon for the number one spot. Yet Casio and Panasonic both score high marks and end up in the top five in both categories.

With their domination of the video market, it’s likely Canon will stay on top. Nikon was slow to react to the DSLR video trend and Canon carved out a nearly exclusive domain in the video space. Nikon has since improved their support for features like 24p, but with so many wedded to Canon glass and shaping their work flow around Canon, making headway into the video market is going to be slow going for any of the challengers. If Nikon has an edge to elbow into the video market it’s their lenses.

One thing to keep in mind is that one of the reasons it may be so hard to pick a “best” camera is that there are so many good contenders out there these days.  If you have the talent, you can take almost any camera and take fantastic photos.  Truly it’s little things that will make the biggest difference.

As you can see there are no easy answers when it comes to choosing a camera. Take your time, compare a lot of models, ask a lot of questions, and focus on the features most important to you.

The iPhone 4 shoots to the top of Flickr's camera ratings

Data from Flickr confirms what we’ve been saying for a long time: The camera people are most likely to use is the one they’re most likely to have with them. No surprise then that the number one camera on Flickr is the Apple iPhone 4.

Coming along in second place is the entry level Nikon D90. Priced at around $1,200 with the 18-105mm kit lens, Nikon seems to have found the sweet spot between price and performance.

The next three in the top 5 all belong to Canon. It’s no surprise to find the EOS 5D MK II in the list, although the Rebel T2i in the fourth spot is kind of a surprise. Perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise for the T2i to be on the list when I consider that among my friends who are professional wedding photographers, one uses the T2i as his main camera and two use it as their backup body.

Anyone who owns a Canon EOS 7D would not be surprised to find it in the top 5. It is one of the most reliable pieces of photographic equipment I’ve ever used.

One should take statistics on Flickr with a grain of salt. While they are reflective of the relative popularity of certain cameras, not all cameras record the camera type in the meta data, which is particularly true of smartphones, and those tend to be under-represented in the data.

Another factor to consider is that statistics on Flickr evolve slowly and are backward facing. So many of the hot new camera models may not be reflected in the statistics for some time to come.

In the point-and-shoot category, Canon owns all of the top five slots. The wildly successful S95 leads the parade, with the G12 coming in second.

Another factor to consider is that Flickr represents a sub-section of photographers actively sharing their photos. Not all photographers are equally active in social media sharing and many of the old timers are skeptical of using photo sharing services.

It is good to check on the statistics from time to time, just to watch the parade of technology. Judging by the stats, for many of you your new camera is also the device you use to make phone calls.

If you never move the mode dial off the green rectangle, you'll never get the most out of your camera - by NJM2010

The automatic features on modern digital cameras are nothing short of amazing. Back in the day we were jazzed when cameras came out with an internal light meter and through-the-lens metering that displayed the actual shutter speed and f-stop instead of just a needle; you’d think it was the second coming of photography. I don’t want to sound like grandpa telling you how good you have it today, but when it comes to photography, your camera is nothing short of a modern marvel.

Yet, for all that sophistication, your camera can’t replace you. Sure, it can take very good photos by averaging the exposure, the problem is that the difference between a good picture and a great picture is frequently that the great photo employs an f-stop and shutter speed other than the one the camera computer would calculate.

There really is no option; if you want to move from being a good photographer to a great one, you have to learn to take over from the computer.

Luckily, you don’t have to jump in all at once, you can ease into driving by selecting shooting modes that share the responsibility for proper exposure between the camera computer and the operator.

Canon shooters have two helper settings short of Full Auto. One is Creative Auto and the other is Program mode. Creative Auto is almost identical to Full Auto with the exception that you can tell the camera lighter or darker, change the depth of field with a slider, and switch to a limited number of picture presets. The camera will still decide whether it needs the flash.

If you switch to Program mode, the camera computer makes a guess at the proper ISO and exposure and you can tweak both the f-stop and shutter speed to your preferences. You can also set the ISO manually and the computer will guess at the f-stop and shutter speed. In Program mode you have to tell the camera to use the flash with the little button that looks like a lightning bolt.

After that are Shutter Priority and Aperture Priority modes where you set one parameter and the computer balances out the rest.

No matter how good computers get at exposure, they will have a hard time with the art. That’s why the human component of photography needs to practice and get familiar with how your camera works. Practice tweaking the settings and exposure until you start seeing the pictures you want.

There are times to trust the computer and times to take over. If you want to be great, you’ll have to know the difference.

The Canon 5D MK II has a full frame sensor and a recently reduced price tag

The discussion of a full frame DSLR versus a crop sensor (APS-C) camera just got more interesting when B&H Photo decided to offer an eye-popping discount on the Canon 5D MK II, offering the body-only with a 16 GB CF card for under $2,000 around Christmas (now back up to $2500).

While I can live without a full frame sensor, the concepts of “need” and “want” become jumbled at times, like when B&H offers a big discount on a full frame camera that I wanted anyway. So, it’s good to go back over the differences and remember why you select one over the other.

First, it might be good to understand where the term “full frame” comes from in the first place. Full frame means the camera’s image sensor is roughly the same size as 35mm film, or 24mm x 36mm. That, my friends, is a big sensor. And, when it comes to sensors, size matters.

Interestingly, one of the reasons you frequently find a Canon 7D being used on a movie set like Black Swan, instead of a full frame Canon 5D MK II, is because the APS-C chip also approximates a film stock used widely in motion picture production called academy 4-perf. PL movie lenses cover 16mm x 22mm and take a wild guess how big an APS-C sensor is? If you guessed 13.8mm x 20.7mm, you were cheating.

The bottom line is a Canon 7D with a PL mount can accommodate all those marvelous movie lenses. There’s even a place that will permanently alter your 7D to be a PL mount movie camera!

It’s More Than Physical

The physical difference between the sensors is significant, with the full frame sensor being closer to twice as large. That is both good and bad depending on the circumstances. Since big chips are harder to manufacture and have a higher defect rate, they are vastly more expensive. So, if your wallet has anything to say about your camera selection, you’ll likely end up with an APS-C camera.

You can see the APS-C chip is slightly less than half the size of a full frame 35mm sensor

The payoff for the extra cost of a full frame sensor is in the detail you get and the low light performance. At ISOs above 1600 a Canon 5D will simply blow the doors off my 7D. Even though I don’t do that much low light shooting, that’s my excuse for wanting a 5D MK II.

Also, if you’re shooting a lot of landscapes or other fine detail, a full frame camera will provide better resolution at distance.

Notice the qualifier “at distance”. Up close, like in a studio setting, the difference will be extremely difficult to notice with the biggest differences introduced by the quality of the lenses.

What Strange Magic Is This?

It’s not magic, just that at studio and portrait distances a full frame camera is shooting largely on the center of the sensor and you’ll likely be cropping out the edges anyway. That’s why I can shoot studio shots side-by-side with my friends owning 5D MK II’s and they’re surprised to see very little difference in our final shots. However, were we to walk across the street to the beach and shoot some landscapes, they would remember why the extra money was worth it.

That’s why it’s important for people to have an idea of what kind of photography they want to do before selecting their gear. Buying the camera before figuring out your photographic specialty is the tail wagging the dog.

My decision to go with a 7D is because most of my work is as a PJ. Lots of run and gun, a lot of being bumped, dumped and jostled, and occasionally working in the elements. An armor-plated crop sensor camera is well suited to that type of work, plus I shoot a lot of video.

I was perfectly happy with my APS-C crop sensor…until B&H put the full frame 5D MK II on sale. Curse you, B&H, curse you.

Owners of Canon point and shoot cameras can have fun with firmware hacks

Owners of some models of Canon point-and-shoot cameras have some interesting features that can be added to their cameras with the help of CHDK firmware hacks.

CHDK stands for Canon Hack Developer Kit and can add features like RAW file output, motion detection that’s fast enough to catch lightning in a bottle, automatic bracketing, full manual control, zebra mode, a live histogram, and crazy high flash sync speeds.

The changes are temporary and can be reset just by switching data cards and resetting the camera. All the same the software is free and experimental, you’re responsible if something goes wrong.

Even better CHDK is being actively developed, so you’ll have new features being added all the time.

If your camera is on the support camera list in the FAQ all you need is a spare SD card and you’re right in business.

CHDK does not replace your camera’s native firmware, it loads as an add-on program that extends the firmware’s capability in lots of interesting ways.

For DSLR users of the Canon 5D MK II, 550D, 60D, 50D, and 600D, you also have some nifty firmware hacks you can play with over at Magic Lantern. Initially developed for video users it has since been expanded to find some of the features found in CHDK.

There’s some debate about whether using CHDK or Magic Lantern voids your warranty so it’s worth some research before deciding whether to try it. Messing with the firmware is never completely risk free, even if you’re upgrading the factory firmware.

Still there is no firmware fun for Canon 7D users.  Magic Lantern has finally got the blank firmware to read properly, but no time frame on further developments.

If you have one of the compatible cameras, read the installation instructions carefully and go have fun.

There’s a big risk labeling anything the “best” when it comes to either cameras or accessories. Photography is a very competitive field from an equipment standpoint and the best of anything will frequently depend on the type of camera you have and what type of shooting interests you the most. Beyond that is figuring out the context. The best value for the money? The best quality at any price? The highest rated?

If you’ve looked at ten different site rating lenses, you’ll find ten different sets of recommendations. That’s not because they’re being bought off by manufacturers, it’s because there is so much good equipment on the market.

What I tried to pick here are lenses that have a loyal following and prove themselves useful in a wide variety of situations. I’m also going to assume you got a kit lens with the camera, most of which are fairly good lenses.

50mm lens

Canon Nifty Fifty and The Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

The 50mm lens has proven itself in 35mm photography for decades and the new breed are lighter and faster than ever before. A good 50mm lens is one of the few that will serve you equally as well with either a full frame or crop sensor camera.

Equally good for portraits and landscapes, the 50mm will be the most consistently useful lens in your bag.

The Sigma 17-50mm is hard to beat for sheer speed and versatility

The Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8

Available for Canon and Nikon the Sigma 17-50 is a great lens for shooting fast and on the go, making it a great choice for photojournalism. It gets 4.5 stars on 65 reviews at Amazon Marketplace.

This lens is very similar to the Tamron 17-50mm, which is my favorite portrait lens but I should clarify that is in the context of photojournalism, not studio portraits. Gets a slightly lower overall rating compared to the Sigma because of the focusing noise and sometimes clumsy zoom ring. Compare the two here.

Canon 70-200 f/2.8L

The Canon EF 70-200 and Nikkor AF-S 70-200

These two lenses tend to be the workhorses for many professional photographers. The zoom range gives you plenty of stand-off range for shooting weddings and events, particularly on an APS-C camera. I’ve seen them shot under almost every conceivable shooting situation, including studio work, and they always deliver consistently good results.

Certainly these lenses are not the best choice for every shooting situation, but they have proven themselves useful and reliable over the years. It’s hard to go wrong with any of these in your bag.