Like Thom Hogan, but for Canon

stadium seats in bryant-denny stadium
Stadium Seats in Bryant Denny Stadium (D5000, 18-200mm lens)

(Or “Like John Siracusa, but for Windows”.)

I was reading Thom Hogan’s latest piece on the state of the camera (from a Nikon shooter’s point of view) for 2010 and it occurred to me that I’d love to see a similar thing written from a Canon shooter’s point of view. I’m not the only one! As someone puts it in the linked thread:

As far as I know, there is no one very analogous to Thom Hogan, to talk about Canon as he does about Nikon. It’s sort of a Mac/PC situation, with Nikon in the Mac category, a brand that, because of its ikonic (sic) cultural appeal, attracts people to its brand in a way different manner than does Canon.

The rest of this post basically argues that Nikon (and Apple) users are delusional members of a cult who obsess about their favorite company, while Canon (and Windows) users just buy the best and cheapest product to get the job done and get on with their lives.

Thom Hogan (and to a lesser extent Ken Rockwell) is kind of the John Siracusa of the Nikon world, and just as there’s really no equivalent to John Siracusa in the Windows world, there’s no equivalent to Thom Hogan in the Canon world.

Consider the following negatives from Thom Hogan’s piece on the Nikon DX range:

  • Lack of consistent accessory connections (three different remote styles on four bodies).
  • Lack of consistent body style (D3100 is different from D5000 is different from D7000).
  • Lack of AI/AI-S support below D7000.
  • No in-body focus motors below D7000.
  • Strange feature inclusions/omissions to differentiate bodies.
  • Positionable LCD available on only one body.
  • Video still lagging, and no video enabled lenses in sight.
  • Constrast AF still lagging considerably compared to competition.
  • Quality control in Thailand plant seems to be strained, at best.

There’s not a single remark in the entire article defending Nikon or chiding Canon or whatever. This is a straight “Nikon is less than perfect and here’s why”.

And no, I can’t find a similar site discussing Canon.

So, what’s with the photo? I was looking for something I’d recently shot with my D5000 and I found it. (Rosanna and I had a “behind the scenes” tour of Bryant-Denny stadium during Dr. Robert Cialdini’s recent visit to UA.) I was going to caption it “a gathering of all the critical fans of Microsoft Windows and Canon DSLRs recently held in Alabama” but that would by petty.