They make good cameras. But I won't buy a Canon.
That was the advice given to me by my photography mentor many years ago. My opinion is that it still holds true today.
Why Won't I Buy a Canon?
Are They Bad Cameras?
All the known brands make great cameras, Canon included. Held against a good eye, they are all capable of taking great pictures. That notwithstanding, just like any mass-produced item, they can have their faults.
Google search: the mirror falling out of the 5D Mark II, the 70D motherboard burning out, the EOS R5 overheating, the chemical reaction of the Rebel 4Ti (650D) rubber grips that changes the grips from black to white, resulting in a risk of skin irritation.
But that’s not my reasoning. I am sure you can find a long history of common faults with most other cameras too. Look online, and you’ll find issues with Nikon, Sony, and any other product too.
Canon 5D Mark III
Is It the Ergonomics?
Several years ago, I had my heart set on buying a 5D Mark III. It seemed a good choice. Several friends, all accomplished photographers, owned them. Indeed, it has since become regarded a classic digital camera and for good reason. With my big hands, I thought it would be perfect for me. However, in the camera shop, I found it heavy and unwieldy, and my fingers could not comfortably reach the buttons.
I’m always advising my clients to buy cameras based on ergonomics, because any model made by the known brands can produce great results once you learn to use them. So, making sure the camera is comfortable to carry and shoot with is one of the most important considerations when choosing your purchase.
But what doesn’t fit my hands might be quite comfortable in yours. So, that isn’t the reason why I suggest you should not buy a Canon.
Is It Their Attitude?
Nor is my advice not to buy Canon based upon the bad-mouthing of other companies by its supporters. That seems to be the modus operandi of various Canon users in online forums and blogs. Of course, that behavior is not limited to their fans; other brand flag-wavers do it too. However, if there is one thing that will make me turn my back on a business, it is when they put down their competitors to make themselves look good.
In January, Canon’s CEO, Fujio Mitarai, reportedly took a snipe at JIP’s ability to turn the Olympus Cameras business around, despite JIP having successes at transforming other businesses in its portfolio. For me, that is dishonorable behavior and would turn me off any business.
How About the Environment?
Is it to do with the environmental impact of the business?
Company-wide, Canon claims their environmental impact is low, They do indeed have far-reaching environmental policies with targets. And they claim to have met their CO2 emissions reduction of each product of 3%, with a total reduction of 40% over eleven years. Nevertheless, this does not mean the company is carbon-neutral. In their last report of 2019, they declared they were still producing 7.1 million tons of CO2 per annum. To put that into perspective, over a hundred years, a tree would absorb one toe of CO2; it would therefore take over 700,000,000 trees to absorb Canon's emissions each year.
Canon makes a lot of noise for having met CDP’s A list for water and climate change, but if you look at the other big brands like Nikon, Olympus, and Sony, they achieved this last year too.
Lots of major companies have environmental policies where they pay lip service to conservation, climate change, modern slavery, and shunning extreme politics. According to the camera industry's last Ethical Consumer report, looking at the environment, people, animals, and politics, Canon is near the bottom of their table with a score of just 4.5 out of 20.
Saying that, the entire industry isn’t squeaky clean. Fujifilm also scores 4.5 out of 20. Sony, Nikon, and Olympus all score only slightly better at 5.5. Meanwhile, Leica, Pentax, and Hasselblad score 7.5, and Sigma scored 9 out of 20. Right at the bottom of the current manufacturers is Lumix, scoring an abysmal 4 out of 20. Nikon and Leica were singled out for both actively promoting trophy hunting.
Ethical Consumer says that no camera company was eligible for their Best Buy label and recommended purchasing a secondhand camera instead:
To avoid companies with links to either surveillance or trophy hunting, we would recommend buying from Sigma, Hasselblad, or Olympus (some cheaper options) for DSLR and mirrorless cameras.
Is the Canon Range Too Big?
A large range of similar products is environmentally bad, using more resources, producing more carbon dioxide in the manufacturing process, and making recycling more difficult. Canon currently has 26 models of interchangeable lens cameras, second only to Sony’s bewildering range of 28. Having lots of models is clearly good for sales, but it’s bad for the planet. Additionally, having too much consumer choice is bad for our mental health.
Screenshot of Canon's DSLR range available at B&H
Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Buy a Canon
Despite all of those good and bad points about the brand that equally apply to its closest competitors, I have three reasons why you really shouldn’t buy a Canon: they are commonplace, boring, and ugly.
Commonplace
Last time you visited an event with lots of photographers, did any single Canon camera jump out as being unique? The only thing that makes them noticeable is their ubiquity. Everyone’s got one. They are to photography what Opel Vectras were to the automotive industry: a car that sold loads, won lots of awards, and was as exciting as a lunchtime conversation at the annual bus-spotters convention. You have a Canon around your neck, it says you are a sheep following the crowd.
Boring
If you place a Canon side by side with an equivalent Nikon or Sony, there’s not much to choose from in their designs. Just as many cars now look the same, their cameras are boringly similar. Visualize spray-painting their bodies beige, and that would make them less mundane. Please don’t try doing it for real; you’ll damage the camera!
Ugly
Let’s face it, most popular or top cameras are not things of beauty. I wonder whether Canon, Sony, and Nikon thwack their cameras with the ugly stick during manufacturing? Sorry, Panasonic Lumix, your cameras are not exactly beautiful either, although you are a long way from the pug-ugly old Sony NEX range. Pentax, you won’t win second prize in a beauty contest and collect $10 either.
Canon and Nikon side by side. Ugly lumps or works of art?
Compare the design of Canon, Nikon and Sony cameras with those of Fuji, Leica, or Olympus. The latter three manufacturers produce models that stand out from the crowd. They are works of art themselves.
Is that important? Absolutely! Artists should surround themselves with beautiful things that inspire. There is nothing inspiring about the generic shapelessness of most modern cameras. Compare the blobby lump of the 5D Mark IV with the beguiling shapes of the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III, a thing of beauty. Even Olympus' professional-end OM-D E-M1 Mark III, which although a bit more utilitarian in design, oozes sexiness when paired with the 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro. These are fabulous-looking cameras. When I use them, I get accosted in the street and asked about them as much as I much as I did when I carried my baby son. If you've ever carried a baby in public, you will understand that.
The stylish Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III
Likewise, the Fujifilm X-T cameras are splendid-looking machines. Leica’s SL2 just shouts out: “Look at me! I’m a photographer with passion.”
Leica and Fujifilm cameras
That's my opinion why you shouldn't buy a Canon. What's yours?
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Click-bait. Pointless. A waste of a good writer's time for the apparent purpose of angering/annoying as many people as possible.
When readers see your name on an article, do you want them to think, "Oh, God. What is this dufus saying today?"
Please aspire to be more than the Borat of photography articles. You are better than this.
Absolutely terrible article!
This clickbait article is proof that the author is failing as a photographer and must resort to nonsense garbage writeups like these to put any kind of food on the table. Leica should send you a bill for uttering their name in the article alone. I'll be sure to use a copout response like the author did when people dislike any kind of purely subjective opinion based argument I lead with. That response being "I just wanted to stir people up!" or "I just wanted to rattle people's cages!". That's not called being constructive and open-minded. That's just called being an asshole.
This is the type of article that make me remove fstoppers from my feeds. Bye bye!
Commonplace, Boring, Ugly. Maybe you should take up knitting.
Lol you people need to learn to chill. I know the pandemic is boring but there's more to life than losing your mind over a silly article.
No Art Director has EVER said, "I don't want to work with a photographer, because his camera is ugly". Lol. This article is click bait. Also, the ergonomics point you tried to make is ridiculous. I guess you won't ever used medium format, because the camera is too big.
did i ACTUALLY read this crap?! wait… so you care more about what the camera looks like then what you can do with it? is this like when my sister only wanted a Toyota MR-2 back in the 90’s because it was purple?
ok, but are you any good with your camera? honestly, if your photos are any good and you have some skill then why would you give a damn about what you make your art with?!
As a professional photographer.... this article should have been released on April 1st.
A camera is a tool, not a perfume bottle.
This article if you can call it that... Was created solely for internet clicks because it's the most idiotic article I have come across in years. Congrats fstoppers! You went full Ret*rd.....
Swans singing and all that, repost
The classic camera manufacturers have already lost huge sales to smartphones. The market for compact and point-and-shoot cameras is virtually non-existent. There is one main reason for this: smartphones now take very good pictures.
I still like to use my Canon 5D MII, a very good camera, but more and more my iPhone iphone 12 pro max.
An example: product photos for sale on the internet? I use the iPhone exclusively, computational photography is simply superior here. Take photos with an app that can be used directly, freestanding products, the app can do that better than many Photoshop experts. And above all, much much faster.
Camera manufacturers are far too slow to adopt Computational Photography.
And yes, full frame cameras have better image quality, but that's not enough. If Canon comes out tomorrow with a FF camera that offers the same computational functionality as my iPhone, I will buy it immediately. Until then, I don't need a new camera, mirrorless or not.
If the Pentaxes, Canons, Nikons, etc. of the world don't come up with this soon, they're over, history. The few people who still buy high-end cameras won't be able to recoup their investment in new sensors and technology. Volumes will simply be too low to earn it back. Already now the manufacturers have problems, because the technologies, which are developed for high end, are not to be sold in the low end after some years.
Smartphone cameras, on the other hand, are sold in enormous volumes, making massive investment in newer technology worthwhile.
This has less to do with image quality than with economic principle.
People who think that computational photography is something negative, just don't understand what it is.
Modern FF DSLR or Mirrorless in the highest price range are neutered. Video RAW for example is not there or only very limited. Since they are probably afraid that the market for high-end video cameras will lose to their slr or mirror less .
Dear camera manufacturers. Provide your cameras please with a reasonable SOC and OS the possibility to install apps, and let me choose which video RAW format I want to use. And don't CROP the video. Let me control everything via tablet and smartphone and load the photos and videos via 5G or WLAN in the cloud. If you don't do that, you're going the same way as Kodak.
Those are all points to consider, but IMO the top things to consider when buying into a camera system are whether it will work well, for me, for the things I want to use it for, and whether it's good value for money. I mostly shoot travel and landscape and I'm used to Nikon ergonomics, so for me a refurb Z7 was a no-brainer. But if I'd gone with Canon instead of Nikon years ago for my first DSLR I could easily be using an R5 or R6 now without regrets.
I am amused by his message. To wit, "I buy a camera based on how it makes me look, not by how it performs". This is the foundation behind the fashion industry that people waste billions on trying to keep up with. So who's the sheep?
I think you are an elteist wacko and should avoid writing articles like this
What a complete waste of time! After all the bashing you did, veiled behind 'oh, but it's not that,' you concluded with "commonplace, boring and ugly." Really? Fstoppers paid you for this drivel?
I think this article says a lot about the author, but doesn't offer much in the way of helpful advice. What I learned from this piece is that that I should avoid this author. Also, I think the editors of Fstoppers should examine their admissions process. This is complete junk. I'd say the same thing if it were written about Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm or any other camera manufacturer.
If the point of the article was to make me angry, no, I'm not angry. I'm really disappointed. I understand that stirring up controversy is a good way to get people to click, but looking at the comments, there is no controversy. This article is being largely condemned as a waste of time. Its negative tone also left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. I think this will be the last time I visit this website for a while.
I literally JOINED fstoppers so I could communicate what a shockingly poor article this is. I've owned Sony and Canon cameras and came away from this thing having learned nothing and without having been in any way amused or entertained. I just don't understand why they'd publish this crud. OK... now I can deregister and never make the mistake of clicking on this kind of empty click bait from fstoppers again... Waste of time.
After I read it, I checked the date that it was posted thinking it would be April 1st, but it was not.
I can't believe I wasted my time reading all of that. I guess the jokes on me.
Basically from what I’ve seen is “Buy a expensive camera that makes you look more professional” umm how dumb can you get🤔. It’s not the camera that makes a photographer good it’s the quality of his work and how they perform with the equipment they can afford or have. I use a Canon 6D and a Canon T7i and have never had any issue with my work or have had any complaints.
Do people get paid to write these articles? Do they have to be approved by anybody before they're posted? I don't normally criticize people's work, but this is literally the one of worst articles I've ever read on any subject. I honestly thought it was a joke. Unfortunately, it wasn't...
Rare login, first time comment...this has to be one of the dumbest articles I've ever seen.
Reading the comments and seeing the author having to respond to most of them explaining his reasoning and attempting to do damage control, is all the reason to know how far this once great page has slide
Fstoppers the new youtube. 100% dry read . I know lets stop viewing fstoppers articles because they don't stand out...
I'm going to echo other people on this - it is the dumbest article I've ever read As a long time extremely satisfied canon owner mind you it is just mindless
Fantastic article! This is one of the best articles on the aesthetic aspects of the camera I have ever read. It is certainly a bold critique of the industry. The juxtaposed images of the Nikon D6 and Canon EOS 1D X say it all, and it is ugly, the ugliness resembles oddly shaped pile of junk which deserves to be crashed and build something beautiful. Bravo for the article!
hmmmm... thousands of lens to choose from and that is your best reason why you won't buy Canon. kinda 🥴👈!
Our wannabe author has apparently left the room ... one hopes (although one doubts) that he now understands that readers saw nothing demonstrating any intelligence in his "article", and that the powers that be here at Fstoppers see the pointlessness of vapid articles of no substance.
It really WAS the worst article on this site in recent (and perhaps distant) memory.
i believe people have nothing left to write about! I can write 500 articles like this or even if i create a poll to fill in the blank at the end.......people will give me enough topics to outlast several generations. Why I wont buy ________ ? Honda? Toyota? IBM? Apple? HP? Honey? Paper? Cigar? Cougar? Condom? House?............
So, this article was my first exposure to this publication. Because of it, it shall also be my last. Utterly horrible editorial decision to publish this tirade that bounces from fashion to trophy hunting to environmental footprint ad nauseum. Not a word about the photos Canon's products produce; I've used nothing but since my first Canon F1 in 1972. Bye-bye.
Being a Nikon guy this article is certainly entertaining but it has little or no substance. The only knock I hear about Canon is that their cameras are not as user friendly or intuitive as Nikon.
Witness here why FStoppers is universally regarded as indistinguishable from those tabloids at the supermarket proclaiming “Alien Bible Unearthed! They Worship OPRAH!!”
This is the kind of absolute drek that FStoppers has become synonymous with.
And a clear sign that FStoppers is in the business, of going out of business.
Can’t come to soon for most of us.
I'm hoping this article gets some of the camera manufacturers thinking about the stylishness of their products.
Ken Hart's picture of his Canon cameras in the comments shows that Canon used to do stylish, as did other manufacturers, so when did the minimal bland look set in?
A few retro styled limited editions might sell well.
Wooooooooow
I have never owned a Canon but WTF was with this article?
The value of Fstoppers just decreased exponentially for posting this rubbish. This was the most "GET OFF MY LAWN" old man rant I've read in a while. Wish I had my five minutes back.
This is the kind of dumb article that gets posted just to get people to sign up for their website to tell them how dumb the article it is. Mission accomplished lol
Also just wanted to point out that fstoppers just published an article expressing that a very large portion of it's readers are "sheep". It has been hard to rationalize coming to this site for a few years now because the articles have been losing substance and originality for years. I fondly remember the days when this site was at the height of it's popularity because the articles had substance, were written by photographers with formidable portfolios, and in general often created content that was backed up by actual skill and talent, making the writer's point of view worth reading. The best word to describe this article is "YIKES", both for it's point of view and the work of the photographer who wrote it, leaving me to believe that their opinion on the subject of photography isn't really worth listening to. I don't feel bad sniping at the writer's photography considering I'm just another "sheep" to him, and I can't really seem to find a good reason to keep coming back to this site anymore because this article seems to represent where the standard for quality has been set for a long time now on fstoppers.
How many years ago? Maybe I can peruse their archives.
Personally I feel that fstoppers was in it's prime around 2014 through 2016. Unfortunately their archives will only take you as far back as 2017.
2017? They go back as far as 2010-2012
Originals: https://fstoppers.com/originals?page=211
Gear Reviews: https://fstoppers.com/reviews?page=30
News: https://fstoppers.com/news?page=91
Oh nice! For some reason I couldn't go past 2017. I must have been looking in the wrong place.
You were probably in the "Latest" category.
Reminds me of that Scott Kelby video where he said you should use a Mac instead of a PC... "because it looks cooler".
Yeah... That was stupid too.
I know it's the typical f-stoppers clickbait-article and it's written to upset people, but this is one of the most idiotic articles i read for a long time. And yes place 2-5 are also f-stoppers articles.
Right now, I am going to Google news, which presented this article to me based on photography being an interest. Once there i’m going to click a little ... icon to the right of this article, and then I’m going to press “🚫 Hide all stories from Fstoppers.”
Pure clickbait. We all got suckered. Are our lives so boring that we clicked on this article with probably a better than 50% expectation that it was going to be worthless? Probably, although the author succeeding in reaching a level of inanity that far exceeded my wildest expectations.
The garbage-to-value (information) content is at an all-time low. Going forward I will be far better off totally ignoring Fstopper clickbait articles.
This artical is total rubish and I'll remember not to bother reading future post/articals from this person.
I looked at Ken Hart's photograph of his Canon collection.
Wouldn't you like an EOS 5 that looked like one of those?
Fstoppers is the worst. So many stupid articles. Photography is all things positive in my life. I wish the leading photography news outlet would stop being such a downer half the time!
My God....uneffin believable. So then...if I want to get a unique, non-boring, and beautiful camera....I guess I'm out of luck....hey??
I don't 'model' my camera around to see what kind of cheers or other reactions I will get. I take photos...period. I let the photos address the issues of.....uniqueness, non-boredom and beauty.
Waddup wit diss sit???