Why I Switched from Nikon to Canon: Scott Kelby

Scott Kelby was not expecting to fall head over heels for Canon when he first tested a 1Dx at a football game. “I thought I would come back and say, ‘Thanks guys for letting me try it. I really enjoyed it,’” he explains.

Yet, this brief encounter put the wheels in motion for his full-fledged brand switch from Nikon to Canon. In addition to a host of technical perks, what really sold Kelby on the brand was the thoughtfulness of the design, and the ways in which a user can customize functions at a level he never imagined could exist in a camera. “The camera felt like it was designed by Apple,” he says. “And how it looks matters.”

This is eighth in a series featuring the many stories and myriad reasons prompting users to switch brands. Follow the links at the end to read about other gear switches—from one DSLR to another, from DSLR to Mirrorless, between inkjet printer brands, and from digital to analog film.

The following views expressed are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily represent those of B&H Photo management.

Photographs © Scott Kelby

Kelby was first introduced to photography by his older brother, back in the days of analog film. “My brother had bought a Nikon,” Kelby says. “So, in my mind, he was using a real camera, because I was always using something other than a Nikon or Canon.”

After starting up a small studio with a friend from his full-time job, Kelby found that he was getting burned out on the medium. “I sold all my gear, and didn’t do anything further until digital started catching on,” he says.

In the intervening years, he opened a graphic design studio with his wife, learning Photoshop 2.0 on the job. This homegrown enterprise of the early 1990s eventually led Kelby to a multifaceted business platform, dedicated to training in photography, Photoshop, and Lightroom.

As Kelby recalls, the first time he held a DSLR, his passion for photography was reignited. “My wife bought me a Canon Rebel for Christmas,” he explains. “It was a great camera. Later, I bought my first Nikon because of my brother’s influence, and I was with Nikon for many years. Basically, in my training courses, all I ever talked about was Nikon gear, because it was all I had,” he adds.

Making the Switch

Fast forward to 2013—the success of Kelby’s business led Canon to approach him about sponsoring some online training, regardless of his brand allegiance. “They said, ‘We want you to know upfront, you will never have to switch to Canon; just add us to your conversation. If you mention Nikon has this lens or that lens, just note that Canon has a similar lens for Canon shooters,’” he says.

Shortly thereafter, one of Kelby’s buddies at Canon offered to let him try out Canon’s premiere sports camera—the Canon 1Dx—at the season’s first NFL football game. “I had always been a little bit curious about the 1Dx, because you look on the sidelines and everyone is using a Canon,” he admits. “I borrowed one for the game, and when I came back to the office, one of my buddies at work asked, ‘What do you think?’ I said, I’m not sending it back. I’m not shooting Nikon for sports anymore. That’s it, I’m done.”

Canon had sent him the camera a week before the game so he could get accustomed to it, and Kelby was surprised at how easy it was to adjust all the controls to match the way he used to shoot with his Nikon gear, so the camera felt very comfortable in his hands. “Canon lets you customize things every which way to Sunday,” he points out. “I was able to go out and shoot my first game feeling like all my dials were exactly how I needed them.”

A self-described guitar fanatic, Kelby uses the metaphor of how different guitars feel in your hands to convey the experience of switching camera brands. “You have to go to a music store, and pick up the guitars and you’ll find out which one feels just right—you don’t know until you hold them,” he says.

While a lot of people worry about switching brands and learning a whole new system, Kelby’s transition ended up being surprisingly easy. “It’s the same stuff I already knew, now it was just easier to find, thanks to Canon’s menu system,” he says. “I had basically shot Nikon all my serious professional life, and if you don’t shoot anything but one camera brand, you just don’t realize there’s this whole other world out there, and it might suit you a lot better.”

Favorite Features

A multitude of factors contributed to Kelby’s attraction to the Canon 1Dx. “The autofocus was better, the images looked sharper, the overall color tone was great, and the menus were easier to navigate,” he says. “There are particular features that are better for sports photographers, like the way the quick dial on the back lets you review your images so fast. When you put them all together, I felt this is the camera I wanted to shoot with for sports.”

Faster Frame Rate

When standing next to Canon shooters on the sidelines, Kelby always noticed the sound of their cameras. “I swear it always sounded like theirs were so much faster than mine,” he says. “While the 1Dx shot two frames per second faster than my Nikon, it felt like it was shooting five frames per second faster. Sometimes that extra two frames per second makes all the difference.”

Advanced Autofocus

When it comes to sports, getting the shot of a football player leaping in the air and catching the ball is no easy feat. A rapid frame rate helps, yet the other key factor is autofocus. As Kelby recalls, when he switched brands, Canon had a more advanced autofocus system than Nikon.

“With my Nikon, there were a lot of times when I’d feel like I got there in time for the shot, but it was out of focus,” he says. “Yet with the Canon, I was suddenly hitting stuff left and right that I would normally miss. I had never experienced that level of autofocus performance, and I came back with a higher number of usable in-focus shots than ever,” he adds. “That was a big determining factor in switching.”

Color Rendition

Various brands handle color in different ways, and Kelby has long been a fan of the color rendition resulting from Canon sensors. “The Canon chip definitely has its own look,” he says. “But depending on what type of images you shoot, you may find it better or worse.”

He continues, “Back when I shot Nikon, I used to say, if my primary subject was people, I would definitely switch to Canon, because one of the things I think Canon does best is rendering skin tones. Maybe that’s why so many wedding and portrait photographers use Canon, where I think some landscape photographers are drawn to how Nikon renders color,” he suggests.

To drive home this point, Kelby describes the way the sensor in a Nikon handles the color red, using the act of photographing a red rose as an example. “We used to have a name for it,” he points out, “we’d say the reds ‘bloom.’ They looked way oversaturated and you would lose detail. But if you were shooting landscapes, it worked for you, because it juiced the reds.”

Yet the real trouble with blooming reds occurs when trying to lower the color’s vibrancy in Photoshop or Lightroom. Says Kelby, “When you tried to reduce that blooming, the reds would just turn pink.”

Kelby’s photographic repertoire spans travel, people, and sports. “I don’t think you can beat the way the Canon sensor handles the color for those subjects,” he says. “It’s very realistic, but without being flat.”

Looking Back on Nikon D4 Sharpness

Preceding his switch to Canon, Kelby recalls a pain point that occurred with his Nikon D4. “The Nikon D3 was a great camera and the Nikon D3s was even better—it was sharp and it was fast,” he recalls. “Then I bought a Nikon D4, and it seemed like a step backward. Not only did it not seem better, I think it actually may have been worse.”

Before long, other photographers were approaching him on the sidelines at games to ask his opinion of the D4’s sharpness. After a friend mentioned doing a side-by-side test, Kelby did some testing of his own. “He was right, I don’t think the D4 is nearly as sharp as the D3s,” Kelby says.

This prompted him to switch out his Nikon D4 for his old D3s as a main body, paired with his 400mm lens. “That’s what I shot 85 percent of the time, until the players got inside the 20-yard line and I’d switch to my D4. I wanted to make sure that the camera I used the most was the sharpest,” he explains.

“So, I was rather disappointed in the D4 compared to the D3s,” he admits. “Maybe that’s why it seemed like such a different world when I got the 1Dx, because I had just bought a really expensive camera that wasn’t as good as the one it was replacing.”

Challenges in Switching and Nikon Features He Misses

When he first switched brands, he was surprised at how hard it was to break the habit of turning the lens in the wrong direction when removing it or putting it on, since Canon lenses mount in reverse order from Nikon’s. “Nikon lenses rotate one way and Canon lenses twist the other,” he says.

While he loved the ease in programming the Canon controls to match his Nikon setup, “You can’t change the lens mount,” he notes. “It sounds like a silly thing, but then you keep trying to put the lenses on in the wrong direction. It’s a habit you have to break.”

Another difference he noticed at first was the predictable feel of his camera’s shutter. “Nikon has a great shutter,” says Kelby. “That was a big thing for me at the time, but now I couldn’t even tell you what a Nikon shutter feels like. I’ve been shooting with the Canon for almost four years, and now it feels very normal and natural to me.”

The other function Kelby misses from his Nikon days is the ability to scroll through the pictures he’s just shot immediately. “When I shoot a continuous burst, I might take 14 shots in a row, and I then need to scroll back and find the shot where the ball was almost in the receiver’s hands,” he explains. “While Canon’s super-fast scrolling is much quicker in getting me there, it requires me to press the Play button first. Otherwise it will only show the last image I took.”

When he’s shooting a game, Kelby’s peak action photo is rarely at the end of the burst—it’s generally five or six frames back. “You have to go through the extra step of pressing the play button before you can scroll back and find that image,” he notes.

While Nikon’s quick dial is much slower in flipping through the images, at least it works immediately—a functionality that Kelby would love to see Canon add. “It would be better for sports photographers, because when you’re out there working, you have 24 seconds between plays,” he says. “Sometimes I’m running down the sidelines, and I need to scroll with one hand.”

Kelby’s Wish List

Despite these minor details, Kelby is fully committed to Canon. “I use it for everything now. I’ve sold all my Nikon gear and I’ve switched everything over to Canon,” he says.

Today, his primary challenge is outfitting himself with the latest gear—his current wish list includes a Canon 5D Mark IV and the new EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM lens. “That was one of my go-to lenses with Nikon,” he says. “The old Canon 16 – 35mm wasn’t so sharp on the edges; however, the new one is tack sharp.”

When talking about lenses, Kelby brings up one glaring hole in Canon’s current lineup. “Canon is missing a lens very badly. They do not make a modern 28-300mm,” he says.

While Canon does make a zoom in the 28-300mm focal range, it is old-fashioned and outmoded. “The barrel doesn’t rotate to zoom, you have to push and pull it,” Kelby notes. “It weighs 3.8 pounds and costs about $2,500.00. On the other hand, Nikon’s AF-S NIKKOR 28 – 300mm lens is sharp as a tack, costs around $950, and weighs 1.7 pounds. It’s awesome for both travel and street photography,” he adds. “Canon needs an updated version of their 28-300mm lens. Now that would thrill me!”

Helpful Switching Tip

As the head of an online photo education program, Kelby has an inside track on how to acclimate to a new system quickly and easily. “It takes very little to get up to speed,” he says.

He finds an apt metaphor in comparing camera functions to driving a car, saying, “What does your car need to drive? A steering wheel, a gas pedal, and a brake pedal. You don’t need a CD player, and Sirius satellite radio, or power windows and power seats. All those things just make driving more enjoyable,” he says. “That’s a lot of what’s buried in those camera menus.”

“What does your camera really need to make a picture?” he adds. “Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. The rest of the features on your camera are pretty much there to customize the camera to the way you want to shoot, and to make shooting more enjoyable. It’s mostly bells and whistles-type stuff,” he points out. “Nice, but not necessary to make an image, any more than power windows are necessary to drive to the grocery store.”

With this in mind, Kelby offers a practical tip to keep up to speed with all your camera’s bells and whistles. “If you buy a new camera, no matter the make or model, your next stop should be Google,” he advises. “Type in the name, make, and model of your camera, and download the free manual in PDF format. You want this format because PDFs are searchable.”

He is the first to admit that camera manuals in paper form are hardly understandable. “With a paper manual forget it, you want to jump out the window,” he says. “But if you can search by keyword it will take you to the page you need so fast.”

Parting Advice

“When you buy a camera, you’re not just choosing a camera, you’re choosing a camera platform. Because you need compatible lenses, compatible filters, compatible everything,” says Kelby. “So, you’re really buying into a system.”

In addition to finding a camera that feels good in your hands, he recommends going with a camera or brand that your friends also own, “because you’re going to need help. You’re going to need to ask your buddies where stuff is, or you might need to borrow a piece of gear for a project,” he explains.

According to Kelby, he is always swapping lenses with fellow Canon shooters, not to mention borrowing the most elusive of camera accessories—a cable release. “What is it about cable releases?” he muses. “I don’t care how many you own, whenever you need one, it’s in your trunk, or at home, or someplace else. If your buddy has one you’re in luck, unless of course, they don’t shoot the same brand as you.”

At the end of the day, Kelby views photography as a social event. “It’s kind of like golf, and you don’t go play golf by yourself very often,” he says. “As you get older, the sports that you wind up playing are social sports. You play football when you’re 19, and you play golf when you’re 55,” he notes.

“So, having friends who have the same brand of gear really makes shooting a very social, sharable, fun group activity,” notes Kelby. “On some level, that does enrich your life—it gets you camera help close by when you need it, and it opens new doors to creativity and fun.”

For more of Scott Kelby’s images, click here to view his portfolio. To learn more about his KelbyOne training programs, click here.

To read the other stories in our series, Why I Switched, click here.

Do you have a story or some insights to share about switching brands? If so, please add your voice to the Comments section, below.