Nikon D700 vs Canon 5D Mark II - Part 1
In the next few months both Nikon D700 and Canon 5D Mark II should be announced. It seems like Nikon D700 will be available for purchase sooner than the Canon 5D Mark II. The Nikon D700 has been rumored to have a 12 megapixel sensor instead of a beefier one. The Canon 5D Mark II on the other hand is rumored to sport a 16 megapixel sensor. Though they don’t seem to go head to head, like many Canon-Nikon cameras, they will be spoken in the same sentence and sometimes compared. They may be roughly in same price ballpark! How are these going compete? And, we cannot discount Sony. Sony will be announcing the 24 megapixel Sony A900 in September 2008 at the Photokina. Sony will be pricing this very aggressively too.
Canon is no longer sit on the sensor laurels after Nikon delivered a one-two punch with the Nikon D3 and Nikon D300. Sony, Pentax and Olympus are packing so much in the entry level models. If anything is an indicator, you just need to look at the how good the new Canon Rebel 450D / Canon Rebel XSi. Going by the same standard, we can expect Canon 5D Mark II to be really attractively built. Weather seals, better autofocus, 3 to 5 frames per second, live-view, sensor shake dust reduction will be standard on the new Canon 5D MarkII.
The Nikon have upped the ante for quite sometime now. Their body, ergonomics, flash, all the feature set have all been commendable starting from the days of Nikon D70 (in the digital era). The sensor was where Canon stole the show and the crowd. With the Nikon D3 and Nikon D300, Nikon seems to have conquered that beast.
So let’s go ahead and compare how the rumored Nikon D700 and Canon 5D Mark II stack up feature by feature:
Sensor:
Nikon D700’s 12 megapixel to Canon 5D Mark II’s 16 Megapixel
Personally I think this will be a toss-up. The target audience for these cameras are smart enough to understand that the difference between 12 and 16 is not too big a deal. The Nikon D3 sensor has proven to be excellent - putting the same sensor in Nikon D700 will be just welcome. The current Canon 5D sensor is no slouch - it sometimes outdoes the Nikon D3. It has proven to be legendary. Canon now needs to beat that with the new 16 megapixel sensor, unless they use the older generation, Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II’s sensor.
Your comments are greatly appreciated. Stay tuned for more…