flying twigs

Canon is the third major brand of digital camera I have used. When I started shooting digital, I chose Nikon because previously I shot with Nikon film cameras.

So after years of shooting Nikon, what made me change to Canon? And as Canon is my third brand, what else did I shoot with?

The reason for choosing Canon was more a question of why not Nikon?

That decision was the result of looking at photographs – both mine and other people’s work. I got this nagging feeling that I simply didn’t like the images from Nikon. They were too contrasty and weighted towards the shadows. And no matter what settings I used, they didn’t have the light and airy look of photographs from Canon cameras.

I know there are people who will argue with me and say that is not the case, but I am sticking with my experience.

And it wasn’t just psychological, something in my head, because whenever I visited an exhibition or looked at completion entries, I could usually tell who had shot with Canon. And I like the tonality and the colours.

I am just going to make a small detour and say that the reason I never made the switch from Nikon film cameras to Canon digital cameras is that with film cameras the technology is in the film. Digital cameras changed all that.

With digital cameras the technology is in the sensor and the processor in the camera.

So when eventually I started to grow apart from Nikon, I happened to be travelling a lot.

I took a break and bought a Fuji X100s and used it and nothing else for several years.

Then when I wanted more focal lengths I needed to decide whether to stick with Fuji, and I did. I shot with a Fuji X-E3. But then the siren call of a bigger camera led me to look again.

And I pretty much thought it was not going to be Fuji. I like the colours and everything, but the cameras are not (or were not) super quick and there is a kind of soft and spongy feel to the shutter. I wanted something that felt ike the proverbial glass rod being snapped.

My Nikon D500 and some lenses went on eBay and I started to look at mirrorless cameras with a clean slate. I think that’s a big thing and maybe underrated, that people have lenses from one brand and they don’t look around at other brands because of those lenses. In my case, I didn’t have a lot of lenses and I sold what I had.

My local camera shop was very helpful (shout-out to Wex Photographic in Cambridge) and they let me put an SD card in various cameras. I took them outside the shop and shot what was happening there.

One thing I learned was that full frame does produce cleaner images than APS-C. And that’s what led me to the R6. It was within my budget and I liked the images it produced.

If you are not familiar with the R6, it is a full-frame mirrorless camera with a 20-megapixel sensor. That’s a lower resolution than the 24MP to 26MP sensors of other models, but that trade-off helps with low-light performance, which really means high ISO performance. Being able to shoot comfortably at 6400 ISO is a game changer.

And it has fast autofocus with subject eye tracking. Being able to stand still and let the camera lock on makes the experience of working fast under pressure with changing scenes feel different and better than chasing shots.

Ricoh GRIII

I said three major brands and yet I have to mention one camera that I keep with me pretty much whenever I leave the house – and that’s the Ricoh GRIII. For the right scene it is a lovely camera to have and take everywhere. It only lacks a viewfinder, which it sorely needs because it is a pig to see where it is focusing in bright sunshine.

At least that was the case until I finally found an external viewfinder with tight frame lines. But that is for another article.