I promise, this blog will get back to focusing on other aspects of photography soon, but my recent camera brand switch has brought so many realizations that I think warrant sharing before I move on. Among them, perhaps chief among them, is the realization that all brands are not created equal when it comes to cost vs. performance analysis. You might be tempted to say, “Duh!”, but for me, this was a realization of how successfully I had been marketed to as a Nikon shooter in the past, as much as it was a recognition that I have been paying a “penalty” for shooting that line, and increasingly so over recent years. I’ll explain further below.

In 2018, I was at ground zero for digital camera gear for my first time in over a decade. I was also limited to a fairly restrictive budget of $3,000 (I knew that I could expand that to about $3400 with a few additional gear sales). In order to rebuild my camera kit, I began by looking at the line that had been my tried and true for many years, Nikon. The lenses that I knew I’d need ranged from wide angle to medium telephoto, and I’ve had a preference for primes for a few years now. I also prefer to shoot with two camera bodies, as it makes switching lenses so much less of a hassle. I found a solution that would work, but it required me to purchase two refurbished, slightly older bodies and two zooms (I had an existing zoom that would compliment). This led me to looking around to see what else was out there within my budget (a process that I’ve already detailed fairly extensively). What I learned was that the big three camera makers, Canon, Nikon and Sony, all quickly priced out of my range, and all pushed users in the direction of full frame.

You might say that this is evolutionary; that full frame is even an improvement over APS-C sensors. But look, you’d frankly be quite wrong. In saying so, you’ve accepted a marketing push that prioritizes the profit of those larger sensors (and larger bodies, lenses, and price points). The truth is that, beyond a pretty tiny subset of users (photojournalists, sports shooters, some commercial product photographers, etc.), the small gains of a full frame sensor over an APS-C sensor, in high ISO situations, subject isolation, or any other metric you are likely to cite, are probably imperceptible to your use. If you are looking for an actual appreciable change in image quality, to the degree usually marketed to bring people to full frame cameras, the gap between a full frame (or APS-C) sensor and a medium format one is what you should examine.

I say all of this as a photographer who has largely sold cropped sensor images to a wide range of clients, many of who have published those images in print or otherwise. I say this as an individual with nearly 20 years of exhibition experience, both as an artist on display and as a curator selecting work for presentation. In all my time, I’ve never heard a client or viewer ask why I don’t shoot “professional” full frame cameras. It is just not all that important in the real world, and if it’s not, would your decision to purchase the camera you currently own have been impacted, had you known?

Your average full frame bodies are usually 2 to 3 times more expensive than their cropped sensor equivalents, and full frame lenses are usually about 1.3 to 1.8 times more expensive than their cropped sensor equivalents. That is one sort of price penalty to pay for choosing the big guys, the other is much more subversive. I’ll use a Nikon example to explain.

Each of the big three have cropped sensor bodies within their lineup to compete with the likes of Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic, etc. However, each of those camera makers prioritizes a user upgrade to full frame over a truly competitive APS-C system. This has implications.

To illustrate, I’ll compare the Nikon D7500 (released in April of 2017) to one of the cameras I purchased, the Fuji X-T20 (released January of 2017). Both cameras occupy the same “prosumer” niche of their respective lines.

We will start with the costs (current as of February 3, 2019) alone for the cameras and a kit such as what I was looking for.

• Bodies: $1146 (Nikon), $699 (Fuji)
• Nikon 10-20 f/4.5-5.6G DX (Nikon unfortunately does not make a faster cropped sensor wide angle) vs. Fuji 10-24 f/4: $307 (Nikon), $749 (Fuji)
• Nikon 24mm f/1.8G vs. Fuji 23mm f/2: $747 (Nikon), $450 (Fuji)
• Nikon 50mm f/1.8G vs. Fuji 50mm f/2: $217 (Nikon), $449 (Fuji)
• Nikon 70-200 f/4G vs. Fuji 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8: $1397 (Nikon), $699 (Fuji)

The total price of either is $3,814 for the Nikon and $3,046 for the Fuji. This means that the Nikon equivalent costs $768 more, or to put it another way, I could add a second body to the Fuji kit and still save money. This isn’t the only comparison where the Fuji comes out on top either.

For instance, my kit does not include the Fuji 10-24mm lens because I was able to get a less expensive third party manual focus lens to do what I needed in that range. A similar version exists for the F mount, which would have been a good one-to-one comparison above, except that Nikon removed the D7500 level camera’s ability to communicate with manual focus lenses like this. This tier of camera in Nikon’s line always had this capability and there was no good rationale for them to remove it, except for profit preservation and to additionally encourage their users to swim upstream. As someone who has owned almost 20 Nikon lenses over the years, backwards compatibility was an important selling point to me when I signed up, and I find this elimination tragic for many long time users.

In terms of other specs, you could make an argument for either cam, though in the areas that matter most to me, image resolution, focus peaking, user interface, etc, the Fuji is the clear winner.

This is not to mention the other elephant in the room (pun intended). Because Nikon has not fleshed out a competitive crop sensor lineup, most of the lenses that pros would be interested in are designed for full frame cameras and have full frame bulk. The weight difference between these two lineups is 4.97 lb (Nikon) vs. 3.85 lb (Fuji), and the length difference between the two largest lenses are 7.03 in (Nikon) vs. 4.7 in. (Fuji). If you are like me, and your work puts you in some crazy places, that weight/size savings is huge.

This isn’t to pick on Nikon, as equivalent kits from both Sony and Canon fair about as well.

So the question that you really need to ask yourself, if you are considering what to buy or just the direction of what you own, is, “Can I condone the cost penalty of owning this system?” Or maybe a better question is, “What do I really NEED to continue to do the work that I do, or even to grow as a photographer?” If you are willing to answer that honestly, I think that the options you present yourself with will far exceed those that may have been already presented to you.