Nikon d50 or Canon Rebel?

Odin_aa said:

Ergonomics are huge, and everyone will have their own take on how any given camera body will fit in their hands. Holding one is the best thing to do, any camera your thinking of getting.

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Agreed.

I will strongly disagree here. Nikon has commited themselves to the DX format and has no where to go with it. You cannot fit more pixels into the same sized sensor without having noise issues. I recently had several RAW images sent to me shot with different Canon bodies to compare with my own gear and have to say that the 5D, 1Ds Mark II, and 1D Mark IIn camera bodies do much better at high ISO than either the D200 or D2x. Nikon will not improve upon this unless they change sensor format to something like Canon's 1.3x on the Mark IIn or full frame. This alone may have me switching over in the not too distant future, as I like to shoot with higher ISO's and would like to have more detail in the images after noise reduction.

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Yes, Nikon has chosen to stay with the DX format...for now. (They will go Full Frame eventually, but that is another discussion for another time) But as for your argument against it, I don't agree. If you do not think the D200 and D80 have the best noise performance of any Nikon digital SLR to date, then you're nuts! The D2X is noisier than the D200 and the D80, but it is also older. I've not read a review on the D2Xs yet. Nikon has had rather good success with the 1.5x crop. And your argument that they cannot improve noise performance without changing sensor format, well, I disagree there too. Let's look at Canon here. The 20D, 30D, and I believe the 350D have better noise performance than the 10D and 300D, yet they all use the same 1.6x crop sensor. (not sure about the 400D's noise performance yet) They have better noise performance because Canon improved upon it. And as I have already said, I fully admit Canon has better noise performance than Nikon, but not by leaps and bounds anymore. Nikon has done much better in the noise area of late.

Not true at all, the Canon L glass has that nice red stripe to let people know you spent the money on the good stuff. Nikon has a gold stripe around their premiere glass, basically any of the glass with a fixed aperture is their high end stuff.

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I stand corrected, my apologies. However, you still have Canon people buying adaptors to fit Nikon glass on Canon bodies. Remember that if you switch and you can save some money and keep using your Nikkor glass. ;-)

I did not compare the D200 images yet, as I don't really use that body much but will get too it...it needs a vertical grip, and I cannot see spending the cash on one if I dont keep the camera. The one thing you must do when comparing noise is ensure you 1. shoot RAW and 2. open them with no noise reduction performed on the files.

The lower end canon bodies I looked at had noise as bad or worse than a D70's files. The professional line from Canon, and the 5D were the only ones that impressed me. I did not have a file from the XTi

I need to get a D2H and D2Hs file as well, however in order to get better noise performance...I mean really get better noise performance then you need to have more room. The larger the area you have for a pixel the less light it takes to energize that pixel. The less light it takes to energize, the better noise performance you can get. I do not think that Nikon will be successful in competing in the professional market unless they make that move, and their are currently no indicators that they will.

I have owned Nikons for years, have no owned a Canon since high school...dont get me wrong I would love to hear an announcement about a D3H that was say 8-11MP with a 1.3x or full frame sensor. Right now, it looks like I may switch brands before that happens...I am not emotional about my gear, I want whatever will perform best.

My little study of the noise is non-scientific and purely a matter of opinion. I want to be able to shoot at ISO 1600 and get relatively clean files. Noise will be there, but give me small grain noise that I can get rid of with noiseware or noise ninja without the loss of so much detail.