I’ve been shooting Canon since college. I purchased the T90, top of the line at the time – Hoo la la.  When Canon PRO went digital in 2003 I didn’t look back.  Then, I went to the Eddie Adams Workshop and was reintroduced to Nikon.  There were so many superstars using Nikon Digital and the file quality was amazing in my initial tests.

For a few weeks I’ve been wanting to test my friend Jonathan Orenstein‘s Nikon D3s.  Finally, I had the perfect controlled situation to give it a try – I was doing a shoot for Bonnier Corp.  I had the studio for a few hours during the PreLight and went to town.  I shot my Canon 1Ds Mark II (older for sure) and the Nikon D3s with studio and available lights.

The first thing to know is that Canon’s ISO range is from 100-1600, but I never really shoot above 320 if at all possible.  Beyond 320 the color channel noise gets crazy and there is unwanted digital artifacts.  The Nikon’s ISO range starts at 200 and goes to 12,800.  That’s 12 thousand.

Shooting was similar between the two cameras but the glass has a different look.  More importantly, the RAW files don’t look anything alike.  I shared the RAW files with my retouchers at DOT Editions and they did a full comparison between the two.  Check it out.

http://doteditions.com/blog/2010/05/canon-eos-1ds-mark-ii-vs-nikon-d3s/

This makes low-light, high ISO, clean file photography possible with the new Nikon DSLR.

Canon vs Nikon