Nikon vs. Canon - Introduction

As previously reported, I ordered my Nikon D3 and my Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III at the same time, back in September. I'd recently also written about seeing a D3 "in the wild" when covering a White House event, and I was eager to get my hands on my own.

That surprisingly happened all on the same day, yesterday, Friday the 7th, when both cameras arrived, separately, from Adorama. The first thing I did was call my friend Mark Finkenstaedt, a die-hard Canon photographer, and invite him over to have a look-see at both bodies, as they were unboxed, make a few photographs of them, and with them, and generally have some fun with what is otherwise sometimes a dry "review".

(Continued after the Jump)

What follows is a muti-part review of both cameras. Since I own both systems, and am not endorsed by either, and in fact, have been critical of both, I think I can take an unbiased look at each camera. My most critical concern was noise, and I don't shoot sports, so, for example, fast focus-tracking is not a top priority for me. I'd dropped $20k on a Canon system, having been a die-hard Nikon photographer, having found the noise in my D2x files at iso640 and above offensive. Couple that with Nikon's failure to address or even acknowledge that elephant in the room was just down-right inconsiderate. Then, you have the absolute failure of Canon to admit to their focus problem in the 1D Mark III, until Rob Galbraith essentially (and rightfully) creamed them in his review, which all but shut down the entire new line of cameras. So, I too was a bit leary of the 1Ds Mark III.

I won't endeavor here to do a review like Rob will on his site. You can count on him to be much more technical and exhaustive in his review. I plan on looking at some external component/control issues, and to focus on the noise and chip size issues. But I can't do this alone, so I've asked three friends to help out. To protect their identities, we'll call them Barbie, Marcus, and Penelope. I've written about Barbie and Penelope here, and Marcus, well, Marcus is a mysterious man, and to learn more about him, you'll have to check out his website.
I've written this in multi-part series, since you may only care about a few of the things I am talking about, feel free to skip around. If nothing else, you'll enjoy the photos!

• Nikon vs Canon - Introduction
• Canon - A first look
• Nikon - A first look
• Nikon vs Canon -The Noise Issue
• Nikon vs Canon -The MegaPixel Issue
• Nikon vs Canon - Shooting Tethered
• Nikon vs Canon - The LCD Screen
• Nikon vs Canon - External Ports
• Nikon vs Canon - Buttons and Access
• Nikon vs Canon - Card slots
• Nikon vs Canon - The Future
• Nikon vs Canon - Conclusions

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