Japanese camera

Aside from the tacit understanding of market strategy and competition of Japanese companies, the product styles of Canon and Nikon are related to their respective corporate cultures.

Nikon is a veteran military optical enterprise. During World War II, the Japanese joint fleet launched Nikon sights, and army sergeants also used Nikon binoculars. It belongs to Mitsubishi Group with military and right-wing backgrounds. In Japan, it is very traditional, conservative and strong, and its products are solid and tough.

Canon is a very international enterprise. Although it started as a camera, with the development of business projects, its coverage is very wide, and photosensitive materials only account for about 1/5 of its sales. This is a modern company with a very commercial spirit, exploring the market with practical technology and new ideas, and taking profit and benefit as the fundamental starting point. What is made is practical and affordable, and can lead the current trend.

In the era of manual machinery, Nikon firmly occupies the top spot of high-end SLR with military quality, because mechanical products pay more attention to solid and durable quality. All its products are famous for their durable leather and excellent assembly. Canon's top machine F- 1 is known as the heavy tank in SLR and the strongest 135 camera, but it still can't shake professional users' trust in Nikon F 1 and F2. Canon took the lead in introducing the design, production and marketing mode of electronic industrial products into the camera field, and launched a middle and low-grade automatic exposure camera with high usability and cost performance, which achieved great market success and ranked first in SLR sales for eight consecutive years.

In the era of automatic electronics, Canon rose by virtue of its strong electronic technical strength, and quickly overthrew the Nikon dynasty by virtue of its high-performance fuselage and lens, becoming the common choice of professional users. Nikon has not caught up with the core technical fields in the automatic era, such as ultrasonic focusing motor and optical image stabilization.

In the early days of the digital age, Canon's advantages were unparalleled, and it began to slow down from the perspective of profit. Nikon, on the other hand, is aggressive, and through its cooperation with Sony, it gradually grasps its right to speak in the field of digital imaging technology. Nikon's full-page launch is a sign of catching up with Canon in an all-round way. At present, it is hard to say what obvious advantages Canon has. However, Canon has abundant technical reserves, which will be released soon under the pressure of the market and will not be easily overtaken by the latecomers.

Specific to product functions, Canon's biggest problem is that it has always had technical reservations.

Never let low-end machines share the technology of professional machines. For example, users can only experience Canon's complete technology by purchasing the top 1 series focusing metering module that has been criticized. In this respect, Nikon is more like a showman, in which the low-end machine is obviously higher than Canon's fuselage of the same grade, so as to interfere with Canon's market division and win over consumers.

Similarly, the materials and textures of different bodies of Canon are obviously different, including the operation mode. The high-end machine is too easy to say, the mid-end machine barely passed, and the low-end machine is as messy as a toy. Nikon has a good texture even if it is a low-end machine. Although there is no obvious embodiment in cost, it gives users of low-end products a certain professional experience.

It should be said that the picture quality gap between the two companies is already very small. Canon's automatic white balance is slightly more accurate, and Nikon's built-in algorithm is more transparent. This has no effect on users who shoot RAW.

As for the lens, before 1980s, Nikon lens was highly appraised for its Gao Fancha characteristics. With the improvement of printing accuracy, Canon lenses with finer layers and better details are favored. From the professional evaluation, Canon L lens can be said to be the highest level representative of Japanese lens and the best autofocus lens in the world. Domestic professionals (mainly newspaper reporters) are popular with the saying that Nikon is hard and Canon is soft. On the one hand, Nikon Gao Fancha lens is more suitable for rough printing of newspapers; Secondly, Nikon first took the initiative to enter major domestic news agencies with high-end products, while Canon entered the China market from low-end civilian channels. After 1990s, with the popularity of Canon autofocus cameras, domestic photographers also fully accepted Canon lenses. In modern times, Nikon lenses have also made up for the lack of dryness and hardness in the past, reaching the same level as Canon's top lenses, with similar styles-Canon is no longer as warm and soft as before, and Nikon is no longer as cold and hard as before. Now it is impossible to distinguish the top shots of the two companies from the imaging. Judging from the imaging style, both shots are basically hearsay.

In terms of focus motor and optical anti-shake technology, Canon's advantages have been maintained to this day, while Nikon still has a gap. However, both companies are high enough, and such a gap will not have any impact on users. The gap is that Nikon's latest top-class fixed-focus lens, due to cost or technical limitations, still can't be equipped with a ring ultrasonic motor like Canon's products ten or twenty years ago. Canon's latest anti-shake technology (such as the third generation IS organization in the new red circle) is still a unique market. Nikon's high-profile nano-coating coating, Canon actually has similar technology and applied it to products. Another performance is that Nikon lenses are more expensive than Canon lenses with similar specifications (mainly high-end lenses).

For ordinary consumers, there is no obvious difference between Nikon and Canon's low-end fuselage and lens. Nikon camera has better texture and stronger focus; Canon cameras have better design and higher resolution. For mid-range users, Canon 5D2 has achieved great market success with extremely high image quality, but compared with Nikon D700, it has obvious shortcomings: poor focusing and metering, and poor continuous shooting. For professional journalists, D3 series is more powerful with its new 14-24 and 24-70 lenses. For users who only want the best effect regardless of price, Canon's top quality and tried-and-tested top lens group are undoubtedly more attractive. The quality of Nikon's new lens, especially its durability, needs time to test.

Sony's SLR camera business is inherited from Minolta. Its cooperation with Zeiss is more of a marketing activity, rather than Zeiss directly designing and producing lenses for it. Sony's Zeiss lens is Minolta and Sony's own product. At present, Sony seems to have given up the competition with Nikon and Canon in the high-end field, and instead pinned its future on single-camera with fixed mirror and micro single-phase computer without mirror. Obviously, in the traditional SLR field, it will not pose too much threat to the status of Nikon and Canon.