12 ms·

Nikon “extraordinary loss” kills DL cameras and slashes jobs

75 points by rtcoms 10y ago

ChuckMcM 10y ago
Its a very tough business to be in. A number of camera makers relied heavily on the higher volume point and shoot markets to fund their higher end cameras. And these days it is unusual to see someone using an inexpensive point and shoot camera rather than their phone.
- marcuskaz 10y ago
  It's a tough business if you just sit back selling mediocre cameras and don't innovate. Numerous companies from Leica, to Sony, to Fujifilm have thrived in recent years even with all the improvements in smartphone cameras. It seemed to have taken Nikon and Canon much longer to adapt to the changing market.
  - carterehsmith 10y ago
    Can we see a chart that shows how Leica or Sony or Fujifilm cameras have "thrived" since the introduction of smartphones?
- cptskippy 10y ago
  The ruggedized point-and-shoot(p&s) cameras saw greater focus in the last couple years due to the eroding of the regular p&s market by smartphones. With intrusion protection being the new bullet point on high end phones' feature lists, this niche market is going to be impacted as well. Despite all that there still seems to be a significant market for p&s cameras, Sony has no less than 20 different p&s cameras. Most of those cameras seem to be variations of the same base model. That sort of variation seems to imply there's a significant demand.
  - sulam 10y ago
    It implies that it's easy to create such cameras. Which is true -- I work for a consumer electronics company and it's pretty amazing how good Chinese manufacturing has gotten. This is no guarantee people are actually buying these things -- i.e. that there is demand. Hyper segmentation is often a signal of the exact opposite -- micro demand, but not macro.
supahfly_remix 10y ago
Does Nikon design its own chips, or do they source them from an external vendor?
- andrewblossom 10y ago
  If I recall correctly, they use a mix of Sony and in-house designed sensors.
- marcuskaz 10y ago
  The majority of the sensors are from Sony, with some from Toshiba and Nikon themselves. http://nikonrumors.com/2015/12/16/list-of-all-nikon-dslr-cameras-and-their-sensor-manufacturerdesigner.aspx/ http://nikonrumors.com/2015/12/16/list-of-all-nikon-dslr-cam...
- slantyyz 10y ago
  Depends on the camera, but for the 1" sensors in the DL mentioned in the article, they have been using Sony chips since the Nikon 1 J5. Before that, the 1" sensors used by Nikon were made by Aptina.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
> According to Nikon, “with the identification of issues with the integrated circuit for image processing, release of the three cameras was delayed indeterminately.” The company had a team working on addressing those problems, but “it has been decided that sales of the DL series will be canceled due to concerns regarding their profitability considering the increase in development costs, and the drop in the number of expected sales due to the slow-down of the market.” I'm curious which of these was the larger cause of the shut-down. Did an insurmountable technical issue cause them to cancel the program? Or did they want to cancel the program because they didn't forecast profitability?
petepete 10y ago
Long term, I think this is a good move for Nikon. Phones have eaten the DL's intended market, and at the DL's price there are already better options available in the same form factor. Mirrorless is the future; if there was a mirrorless Nikon camera that could take advantage of decades of F-Mount lenses, surely they'd be on to a winner
- monksy 10y ago
  Phones and DLs are apples and oranges. You can't get the same shots on a phone that you can on a DL.
  - monk_e_boy 10y ago
    No but that shot on the DL has to be AMAZING compared to the phone. Otherwise people will just use their phones... another bit of equipment to worry about, to figure out how to crop a photo and upload it to facebook. It's too much effort for most people.
    - monksy 10y ago
      Right, however.. Most of those high-end cameras have Wifi on the device that can transfer to the phone. I would still argue that they're for different use cases.
      - dpark 10y ago
        Most people who care about taking really good photos are probably looking at DSLR or mirrorless. The DL line seems to occupy a middle ground that's neither convenient nor significantly better than a phone.
        monk_e_boy 10y ago
        I picked up a 35mm rangefinder with a f1.7 lens for about £20 off ebay. You still can't get a digital camera that good for under £1,000. Digital is still a long way behind 1960s technology / price point
callmeed 10y ago
> with increasingly capable smartphones chewing through the dedicated photography segment. Still, it seems Nikon has suffered it worse than most. The damage from smartphones was done a while back. The truth now is that Nikon (and Canon to some extent) failed to be at the forefront of: (a) action/drone cameras, (b) 4K video recording, and (c) mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras. Sony and Fujifilm have seen a real renaissance in their mirrorless camera lines (I switched from Canon to Fuji and haven't looked back). Sony has small mirrorless cameras that shoot 4K on par or better than Nikon. GoPro created a billion dollar public company yet Nikon only just recently announced their own action cameras. I worked in the photo industry for several years and Nikon was once the gold standard. IMO they have no one to blame for their current state than themselves.
- criley2 10y ago
  I mean, I suppose on the consumer or prosumer level, but if you go to any sporting event, you will see a sea of Canon L series glass and not much else... Not sure the quality of the source but this suggests that 75% of the pro cameras at last weeks Super Bowl were Canon, and all of the television broadcast lenses were HD Canon lenses. I just don't see GoPro or Fuji competing at that level, so perhaps their issue was expanding past the point that their core business could support once those periphery product lines fell out of trend. [1] http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-eos-dslr-cameras-and-ef-lenses-touch-down-on-the-sidelines-of-the-big-game-in-houston/ http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-eos-dslr-cameras-and-ef-len...
  - monkmartinez 10y ago
    How many professional sports photographers are there? I guess all those wedding photographers need to look the part with Canon's and Nikon's too. Is that enough to keep Canon and Nikon afloat?
    - sgt101 10y ago
      My wife's a professional wedding photographer, so she's got the glass as you say in the game... I'm a dunce photographer, but I've been taking photos using my phone (like everyone) and I enjoyed it, so one day I picked up one of the DSLR's with a "decent" 85mm lens on it and took a photo. The difference is astonishing - it's night and day. The world is filled with light and depth, colours are like bonfires shadows are like the pits of the deepest mine. But then again I guess that's one data point! It may be that in fact phone cameras are great and I'm just deluded.
TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
As much as I love my sony A7s-II, the UI has been a nightmare and Sony won't update the app to support the Pixel so that is useless now. However, I still haven't seen a 4k mirrorless equivalent from Canon so my Sony is still the best option for what I want to accomplish. I still use Canon and Nikon glass however.
perardi 10y ago
Damnation, I was hankering for the DL 18–50. I'm an ultra-wide-angle addict, and that would have been an amazing "I'm packing really light for this trip" camera. Thom Hogan, a longtime Nikon pundit, has good thoughts on how badly Nikon is handling this disruption. (I think smartphones are one of the best examples of Christensen disruption; they started out awful, are still relatively awful, but they are cheap, ubiquitous, and get the job done of getting photos of your cats and kids to Facebook instantly.) http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/dl-turns-out-to-mean-dead.html http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/dl-turns-out-to-mean-dea...
- buserror 10y ago
  To be fair, I've been using a Panasonic DMC-GM1 with a 14mm pancake for a few years and I don't really see how the DL would have improved on that... A bit more speed, but then again the GM1 is not even on sale anymore and Nikon failed entirely to release their take on the ultralight 4/3 equivalent... Years too late!
  - acomjean 10y ago
    For those that don't know what 4/3 cameras are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Thirds_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Thirds_system The camera business had a new small interchangeable lens almost pocketable camera "standard". The micro 4/3 used sadly by only olympus and panasonic. When I travel to take pictures I take a canon 5D SLR and a much smaller olympus micro 4/3 with a wide angle zoom. Why Canon/Nikon/Sony go their own way with incompatible small mirrorless cameras I have no idea. I would love more lens options for micro 4/3 and those big camera makers make great glass...
porsupah 10y ago
It's worth bearing in mind that the loss is primarily due to their lithography business, rather than imaging: http://www.nikon.com/news/2017/20170213_1_e.pdf http://www.nikon.com/news/2017/20170213_1_e.pdf "In accordance with this restructuring, the Group recorded extraordinary loss of 29,790 million yen, mainly incurred from inventory write-downs/write-off in Semiconductor Lithography Business, as restructuring expenses for the nine months ended December 31, 2016."
- degenerate 10y ago
  Also, Canon has been kicking Nikon's butt at form, function, and price in the camera market. This is strictly my opinion and the same of some of my friends.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    Really? How so? Lenses are pretty close in price & the D600 had a much better sensor than the 6D for example.
    - slantyyz 10y ago
      Don't Nikon DSLRs generally beat Canon with their DxO sensor scores?
      - jdietrich 10y ago
        Nikon have better sensors, Canon have better lenses. Neither company can keep pace with Sony and Zeiss.
        slantyyz 10y ago
        >> Neither company can keep pace with Sony and Zeiss. I'm a fan of Sony cameras, but I would only go so far as to say that Sony's sensors are great. I find some of Sony's handling and physical camera design choices to be a little questionable, especially when compared to Olympus, Panasonic and Fuji.
pthreads 10y ago
It's sad to read about the downward trajectory of Nikon's future. I loved their interchangeable lenses. In my opinion they were better than Canon's (not enough space here to go into details). I had an 80-200 f2.8 telephoto that, between multiple owners, probably saw 15+ years of service and still going strong.
- rangibaby 10y ago
  Even if they go bust, there is a hope they will get back to their roots and end up remaking their classic lenses like Voigtlander or Meyer Optik Goerlitz. Nikon (and Canon I think) problem these days is a body is a body. Their bodies aren't dramatically different to those of other manufacturers, yet they still demand a premium price. Fujifilm and Pentax for example offer good enough or better alternatives at reasonable price points and are doing just fine. I want Nikon to do well but they need to try harder.
justicezyx 10y ago
I do hope they find a way to sustain their high-end DSLR line. Otherwise, I think the price tag is going to increase too much...
Thaxll 10y ago
Sounds like Kodak's fate.
luckydude 10y ago
I'm a Canon guy (1DX II, 5D III, 7D II and lots of Canon glass, a couple of Sigmas, a Rokinon) and I try and convert my buds to Canon from Nikon all the time. Here is why. For decades the leader in [D]SLRs was either Canon or Nikon. Yeah, yeah, there are others, I started out on Pentax as did many people back in the film days, but it was clear 35-40 years ago that it was either Canon or Nikon if you were serious (and more yeah, yeah, Hasselblad was a thing back then but they priced themselves out of the market as did Leica and Zeiss etc. Awesome stuff but $$$$). Who was "best" bounced back and forth and it really didn't matter if you picked Canon or Nikon, if Canon was best now, wait a few years and it would be Nikon. It's important to realize that the consumer equipment, including all those plastic crappy kit lenses, generated a lot of revenue and that money funded a lot of high end equipment. I tend to doubt that Canon sells enough of their $12,000 600mm lenses to cover the costs of development. Maybe, but I doubt it. Nikon stumbled at the wrong time. They stopped being best (for the most part, the D800/810 were and are amazing bodies) quite a while ago and they haven't recovered. This is just my opinion (all of this is just my opinion for that matter) but I think the reason they haven't recovered is that they dug themselves into a hole right as point and shoots, and then cell phone cameras, got "good enough" for the masses. Definitely not good enough for anyone serious, compare any portrait taken with a phone to something taken with Canon's 200mm f2 (by far my favorite lens) or even Sigma's 85mm f1.4 Art. You can't get that dreamy smooth background with that razor thin depth of focus that makes the person pop, it just can't be done. But I digress. Nikon is in trouble because of the loss of revenue from the low end P&S and consumer DSLRs. For the low end, phones are good enough and they are always with you. Canon doesn't have that problem, they've got 75-80% of the high end market, look at any sporting event and you'll see a sea of big white lenses, those are all Canon. Canon also has a dramatically better line up of lenses and for anyone serious, it's the glass that costs the money, I've got far more money tied up in glass than I do in bodies. Nikon used to have one lens that Canon had no answer for, the 14-24mm f2.8, I lusted after that lens. But Canon came out with the 16-35mm f2.8, which is sharper than a 15mm Ziess prime and that's it in my book, game over. There is nothing that Nikon has that Canon doesn't have as good (and mostly better). And Canon has a ton of glass that Nikon doesn't have. Canon is also better positioned, they make a lot more stuff than Nikon does, they are serious players in anything with a lens, their movie stuff generates money, their printers generate money, their security stuff generates money, they can weather pretty much anything. I shoot semi pro sports and all my pro friends are dumping Nikon (while they can get anything for their glass) and moving to Canon. Tl;DR: Nikon is in trouble, Canon is fine, the DSLR market is strong at the mid to high end. Low end is dead.

75 points by rtcoms 10y ago

Its a very tough business to be in. A number of camera makers relied heavily on the higher volume point and shoot markets to fund their higher end cameras. And these days it is unusual to see someone using an inexpensive point and shoot camera rather than their phone.

marcuskaz 10y ago
It's a tough business if you just sit back selling mediocre cameras and don't innovate. Numerous companies from Leica, to Sony, to Fujifilm have thrived in recent years even with all the improvements in smartphone cameras. It seemed to have taken Nikon and Canon much longer to adapt to the changing market.
- carterehsmith 10y ago
  Can we see a chart that shows how Leica or Sony or Fujifilm cameras have "thrived" since the introduction of smartphones?
cptskippy 10y ago
The ruggedized point-and-shoot(p&s) cameras saw greater focus in the last couple years due to the eroding of the regular p&s market by smartphones. With intrusion protection being the new bullet point on high end phones' feature lists, this niche market is going to be impacted as well. Despite all that there still seems to be a significant market for p&s cameras, Sony has no less than 20 different p&s cameras. Most of those cameras seem to be variations of the same base model. That sort of variation seems to imply there's a significant demand.
- sulam 10y ago
  It implies that it's easy to create such cameras. Which is true -- I work for a consumer electronics company and it's pretty amazing how good Chinese manufacturing has gotten. This is no guarantee people are actually buying these things -- i.e. that there is demand. Hyper segmentation is often a signal of the exact opposite -- micro demand, but not macro.

supahfly_remix 10y ago

Does Nikon design its own chips, or do they source them from an external vendor?

andrewblossom 10y ago
If I recall correctly, they use a mix of Sony and in-house designed sensors.
marcuskaz 10y ago
The majority of the sensors are from Sony, with some from Toshiba and Nikon themselves. http://nikonrumors.com/2015/12/16/list-of-all-nikon-dslr-cameras-and-their-sensor-manufacturerdesigner.aspx/ http://nikonrumors.com/2015/12/16/list-of-all-nikon-dslr-cam...
slantyyz 10y ago
Depends on the camera, but for the 1" sensors in the DL mentioned in the article, they have been using Sony chips since the Nikon 1 J5. Before that, the 1" sensors used by Nikon were made by Aptina.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

> According to Nikon, “with the identification of issues with the integrated circuit for image processing, release of the three cameras was delayed indeterminately.” The company had a team working on addressing those problems, but “it has been decided that sales of the DL series will be canceled due to concerns regarding their profitability considering the increase in development costs, and the drop in the number of expected sales due to the slow-down of the market.” I'm curious which of these was the larger cause of the shut-down. Did an insurmountable technical issue cause them to cancel the program? Or did they want to cancel the program because they didn't forecast profitability?

petepete 10y ago

Long term, I think this is a good move for Nikon. Phones have eaten the DL's intended market, and at the DL's price there are already better options available in the same form factor. Mirrorless is the future; if there was a mirrorless Nikon camera that could take advantage of decades of F-Mount lenses, surely they'd be on to a winner

monksy 10y ago
Phones and DLs are apples and oranges. You can't get the same shots on a phone that you can on a DL.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  No but that shot on the DL has to be AMAZING compared to the phone. Otherwise people will just use their phones... another bit of equipment to worry about, to figure out how to crop a photo and upload it to facebook. It's too much effort for most people.
  - monksy 10y ago
    Right, however.. Most of those high-end cameras have Wifi on the device that can transfer to the phone. I would still argue that they're for different use cases.
    - dpark 10y ago
      Most people who care about taking really good photos are probably looking at DSLR or mirrorless. The DL line seems to occupy a middle ground that's neither convenient nor significantly better than a phone.
      - monk_e_boy 10y ago
        I picked up a 35mm rangefinder with a f1.7 lens for about £20 off ebay. You still can't get a digital camera that good for under £1,000. Digital is still a long way behind 1960s technology / price point

callmeed 10y ago

> with increasingly capable smartphones chewing through the dedicated photography segment. Still, it seems Nikon has suffered it worse than most. The damage from smartphones was done a while back. The truth now is that Nikon (and Canon to some extent) failed to be at the forefront of: (a) action/drone cameras, (b) 4K video recording, and (c) mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras. Sony and Fujifilm have seen a real renaissance in their mirrorless camera lines (I switched from Canon to Fuji and haven't looked back). Sony has small mirrorless cameras that shoot 4K on par or better than Nikon. GoPro created a billion dollar public company yet Nikon only just recently announced their own action cameras. I worked in the photo industry for several years and Nikon was once the gold standard. IMO they have no one to blame for their current state than themselves.

criley2 10y ago
I mean, I suppose on the consumer or prosumer level, but if you go to any sporting event, you will see a sea of Canon L series glass and not much else... Not sure the quality of the source but this suggests that 75% of the pro cameras at last weeks Super Bowl were Canon, and all of the television broadcast lenses were HD Canon lenses. I just don't see GoPro or Fuji competing at that level, so perhaps their issue was expanding past the point that their core business could support once those periphery product lines fell out of trend. [1] http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-eos-dslr-cameras-and-ef-lenses-touch-down-on-the-sidelines-of-the-big-game-in-houston/ http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-eos-dslr-cameras-and-ef-len...
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  How many professional sports photographers are there? I guess all those wedding photographers need to look the part with Canon's and Nikon's too. Is that enough to keep Canon and Nikon afloat?
  - sgt101 10y ago
    My wife's a professional wedding photographer, so she's got the glass as you say in the game... I'm a dunce photographer, but I've been taking photos using my phone (like everyone) and I enjoyed it, so one day I picked up one of the DSLR's with a "decent" 85mm lens on it and took a photo. The difference is astonishing - it's night and day. The world is filled with light and depth, colours are like bonfires shadows are like the pits of the deepest mine. But then again I guess that's one data point! It may be that in fact phone cameras are great and I'm just deluded.

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago

As much as I love my sony A7s-II, the UI has been a nightmare and Sony won't update the app to support the Pixel so that is useless now. However, I still haven't seen a 4k mirrorless equivalent from Canon so my Sony is still the best option for what I want to accomplish. I still use Canon and Nikon glass however.

perardi 10y ago

Damnation, I was hankering for the DL 18–50. I'm an ultra-wide-angle addict, and that would have been an amazing "I'm packing really light for this trip" camera. Thom Hogan, a longtime Nikon pundit, has good thoughts on how badly Nikon is handling this disruption. (I think smartphones are one of the best examples of Christensen disruption; they started out awful, are still relatively awful, but they are cheap, ubiquitous, and get the job done of getting photos of your cats and kids to Facebook instantly.) http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/dl-turns-out-to-mean-dead.html http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/dl-turns-out-to-mean-dea...

buserror 10y ago
To be fair, I've been using a Panasonic DMC-GM1 with a 14mm pancake for a few years and I don't really see how the DL would have improved on that... A bit more speed, but then again the GM1 is not even on sale anymore and Nikon failed entirely to release their take on the ultralight 4/3 equivalent... Years too late!
- acomjean 10y ago
  For those that don't know what 4/3 cameras are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Thirds_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Thirds_system The camera business had a new small interchangeable lens almost pocketable camera "standard". The micro 4/3 used sadly by only olympus and panasonic. When I travel to take pictures I take a canon 5D SLR and a much smaller olympus micro 4/3 with a wide angle zoom. Why Canon/Nikon/Sony go their own way with incompatible small mirrorless cameras I have no idea. I would love more lens options for micro 4/3 and those big camera makers make great glass...

porsupah 10y ago

It's worth bearing in mind that the loss is primarily due to their lithography business, rather than imaging: http://www.nikon.com/news/2017/20170213_1_e.pdf http://www.nikon.com/news/2017/20170213_1_e.pdf "In accordance with this restructuring, the Group recorded extraordinary loss of 29,790 million yen, mainly incurred from inventory write-downs/write-off in Semiconductor Lithography Business, as restructuring expenses for the nine months ended December 31, 2016."

degenerate 10y ago
Also, Canon has been kicking Nikon's butt at form, function, and price in the camera market. This is strictly my opinion and the same of some of my friends.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  Really? How so? Lenses are pretty close in price & the D600 had a much better sensor than the 6D for example.
  - slantyyz 10y ago
    Don't Nikon DSLRs generally beat Canon with their DxO sensor scores?
    - jdietrich 10y ago
      Nikon have better sensors, Canon have better lenses. Neither company can keep pace with Sony and Zeiss.
      - slantyyz 10y ago
        >> Neither company can keep pace with Sony and Zeiss. I'm a fan of Sony cameras, but I would only go so far as to say that Sony's sensors are great. I find some of Sony's handling and physical camera design choices to be a little questionable, especially when compared to Olympus, Panasonic and Fuji.

pthreads 10y ago

It's sad to read about the downward trajectory of Nikon's future. I loved their interchangeable lenses. In my opinion they were better than Canon's (not enough space here to go into details). I had an 80-200 f2.8 telephoto that, between multiple owners, probably saw 15+ years of service and still going strong.

rangibaby 10y ago
Even if they go bust, there is a hope they will get back to their roots and end up remaking their classic lenses like Voigtlander or Meyer Optik Goerlitz. Nikon (and Canon I think) problem these days is a body is a body. Their bodies aren't dramatically different to those of other manufacturers, yet they still demand a premium price. Fujifilm and Pentax for example offer good enough or better alternatives at reasonable price points and are doing just fine. I want Nikon to do well but they need to try harder.

justicezyx 10y ago

I do hope they find a way to sustain their high-end DSLR line. Otherwise, I think the price tag is going to increase too much...

Thaxll 10y ago

Sounds like Kodak's fate.

luckydude 10y ago

I'm a Canon guy (1DX II, 5D III, 7D II and lots of Canon glass, a couple of Sigmas, a Rokinon) and I try and convert my buds to Canon from Nikon all the time. Here is why. For decades the leader in [D]SLRs was either Canon or Nikon. Yeah, yeah, there are others, I started out on Pentax as did many people back in the film days, but it was clear 35-40 years ago that it was either Canon or Nikon if you were serious (and more yeah, yeah, Hasselblad was a thing back then but they priced themselves out of the market as did Leica and Zeiss etc. Awesome stuff but $$$$). Who was "best" bounced back and forth and it really didn't matter if you picked Canon or Nikon, if Canon was best now, wait a few years and it would be Nikon. It's important to realize that the consumer equipment, including all those plastic crappy kit lenses, generated a lot of revenue and that money funded a lot of high end equipment. I tend to doubt that Canon sells enough of their $12,000 600mm lenses to cover the costs of development. Maybe, but I doubt it. Nikon stumbled at the wrong time. They stopped being best (for the most part, the D800/810 were and are amazing bodies) quite a while ago and they haven't recovered. This is just my opinion (all of this is just my opinion for that matter) but I think the reason they haven't recovered is that they dug themselves into a hole right as point and shoots, and then cell phone cameras, got "good enough" for the masses. Definitely not good enough for anyone serious, compare any portrait taken with a phone to something taken with Canon's 200mm f2 (by far my favorite lens) or even Sigma's 85mm f1.4 Art. You can't get that dreamy smooth background with that razor thin depth of focus that makes the person pop, it just can't be done. But I digress. Nikon is in trouble because of the loss of revenue from the low end P&S and consumer DSLRs. For the low end, phones are good enough and they are always with you. Canon doesn't have that problem, they've got 75-80% of the high end market, look at any sporting event and you'll see a sea of big white lenses, those are all Canon. Canon also has a dramatically better line up of lenses and for anyone serious, it's the glass that costs the money, I've got far more money tied up in glass than I do in bodies. Nikon used to have one lens that Canon had no answer for, the 14-24mm f2.8, I lusted after that lens. But Canon came out with the 16-35mm f2.8, which is sharper than a 15mm Ziess prime and that's it in my book, game over. There is nothing that Nikon has that Canon doesn't have as good (and mostly better). And Canon has a ton of glass that Nikon doesn't have. Canon is also better positioned, they make a lot more stuff than Nikon does, they are serious players in anything with a lens, their movie stuff generates money, their printers generate money, their security stuff generates money, they can weather pretty much anything. I shoot semi pro sports and all my pro friends are dumping Nikon (while they can get anything for their glass) and moving to Canon. Tl;DR: Nikon is in trouble, Canon is fine, the DSLR market is strong at the mid to high end. Low end is dead.