About 8 or 9 years ago, I started to get a bit more serious about taking pictures. I had gone on a business trip to China, and I didn’t own a camera. I realized there was a lot of cool stuff I wanted to have pictures of, and I went to one of those electronics shops that they have in every big port city to buy a camera. I wound up with an Olympus non-SLR camera that took good enough pictures, but I wanted more. I was about to go on another trip, and I wanted a good camera to take with me. I researched Canon and Nikon online, and wound up with a Nikon system.

The main reason I went with Nikon was that their lenses were supposed to be better, and the price for Nikon lenses were lower than those for like Canon lenses. As it turns out, I didn’t wind up buying very many lenses anyway, although I did take some good pictures with that camera.

Anyway, I’m hankering for a digital SLR, and despite my (admittedly meager) investment in Nikon lenses, I’m going to probably buy a Canon system. I had always considered myself a Nikon person, but when the time came to buy a digital camera, I bought a Canon Digital Elph, and I’m going to go with Canon again on the SLR front. Lots of other people (including Garret Vreeland) are doing the same thing. So at some point when I buy the new system, I’ll probably Ebay my Nikon stuff and be done with them.

If you’re not a camera geek, you won’t understand how big a decision this is. It’s like buying a Chevy truck after driving a lifetime of Fords, or switching over to vi after years of using Emacs. I became a bitter Nikon partisan as soon as I decided to buy a Nikon, and honestly I have no way of explaining why. It is just a camera after all. Needless to say, that partisanship will go away when I’ve become a photography flip flopper.

Anyway, I’m not sure what this means for Nikon. It seems like everywhere I turn I read about pros and amateurs dumping Nikon for Canon.