Nikon vs Canon vs Sony Full-Frame Mirrorless
Mục lục
Nikon vs Canon vs Sony
Full-Frame Mirrorless Compared
Image & Shooting Native Lenses
Adapted Lenses Autofocus Manual Focus
Finder Controls Top Display
Ergonomics & Menus Presets Playback
Power & Battery Data & Formatting
Quality & Support Weights Prices
Best for Total Scores
August 2022 Better Pictures Nikon Canon Sony Fuji LEICA All Reviews
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This 100% all-content, no-junk website’s biggest source of support is when you use any of these links to my personally-approved sources when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live. None of these brands seal its boxes in any way, so never buy at retail or any other source not on my personally approved list since you’ll have no way of knowing if you’re missing accessories, getting a defective, damaged, returned, gray-market, store demo or used camera. Get yours only from the trusted sources I’ve used personally for decades for the best prices, service, return policies and selection. Thanks for helping me help you! Ken.
Nikon Z7 vs Z6
Canon EOS R, RP, R6 & R7 Compared
Canon EOS R vs EOS RP
All Sony Cameras Compared
Image & Shooting
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Native Lenses
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* The Canon is the only one missing in-body sensor-shift stabilization (IBIS), but I’ve never found Sony’s IBIS to work very well unless it’s also used with a lens with a stabilizer, so I don’t consider IBIS a particularly useful feature. I also suspect that Nikon uses a Sony sensor, so they got that one for free. In-lens stabilization works much better than shifting a sensor, so no points off from Canon here. In fact, the Canon RF 24-105/4L IS has such great stabilization that I can hand-hold at a half second!
Adapted Lenses
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Autofocus
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Nikon Z7 & Z6
Canon EOS R & EOS RP
Sony A7 III, A7R3 & A9
Overall Autofocus Performance
Poor
All-Area AF, even with the latest firmware in the Z9, Z7 II and Z6 II, doesn’t always identify and use the correct sensor, so you often have to select AF areas manually – or miss the shot!
Excellent
Excellent
Autofocus Speed
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Autofocus Accuracy
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Autofocus with Teleconverters
Excellent
Holy cow! Works great, with fast, full-frame AF with my TC-20E and FTZ.
Excellent
Fast, full-frame AF with my 100‑400L IS II even when used with both my 1.4x and 2x converters at the same time (280‑1120mm f/12.6‑16 equiv.)!
AF-Point Selection when using EVF
Nubbin
and 4-way clicker.
Touch Screen
and 4-way clicker.
Touch Screen
and Nubbin.
Face Recognition
Poor
Recognizes faces well, but usually selects a random face in the background giving out-of-focus pictures unless you stop what you’re doing and select a face manually. Isn’t smart enough to pick out the correct face as other brands and iPhone do much better.
Very Good
Works as we expect.
Excellent
Works instantly and is almost always in perfect focus.
Very Low-Light AF w/no AF Illuminator (light so dim it’s hard to read a restaurant menu)
Poor
Slow and pokey, or just gives up.
Excellent
Might get slower, but sees in less light than I can and gets perfect focus.
Excellent
Might get slower, but sees in less light than I can and gets perfect focus.
AF Area Colors
Excellent to Poor
Excellent in AF-S: Green for OK and Red or blank for out-of-focus.
Poor in AF-C: Red for OK (are they kidding?) and Yellow for out-of-focus.
Good luck if you expect to use both AF modes: red means GO in AF-C and green means GO in AF-S! So sad.
Very Good
Green for Locked (ONE SHOT), Blue for Tracking (SERVO) and Gray for unfocused.
Excellent
Green for OK or Gray for unfocused.
AF Illuminator?
Yes
Vivid green LED
Yes
Amber LED
Yes
Amber LED
Stage Score (points out of 12)
3
Good AF, but more difficult to control and not always well displayed.
10
Excellent AF and easy to control.
12
Extraordinary AF and easy to control.
Manual Focus
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Nikon Z7 & Z6
Canon EOS R & EOS RP
Sony A7 III, A7R3 & A9
Instant Manual Focus Override
Excellent
Works as we expect; just grab the electronic manual-focus ring in any mode at any time and you’re in charge.
Poor
Rarely responds. Only works in some modes and only in certain conditions.
Poor
Rarely responds. Only works in some modes and only in certain conditions.
Focus Magnifier?
Yes
Yes
Yes
Manual Focus Peaking?
YES
Set MENU > CUSTOM (pencil) > d Shooting/display > d10 peaking highlights > Peaking level and make your choices.
YES
Set MENU > AF page 2 (EOS R) or Camera Page 8 (EOS RP) > MF peaking settings > Peaking > ON. It’s OFF by default.
YES
Finder
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Nikon Z7 & Z6
Canon EOS R & EOS RP
Sony A7 III
Finder Auto-Brightness Control?
YES
No
YES
Finder Auto-Brightness Control Performance
Good
The auto-selected brightness isn’t always at the correct brightness so you may wind up setting it manually anyway.
None, so usually needs manual adjustment as you move outdoors or indoors, but once you set it, it looks great until your light changes.
You can save the brightness to the C1, C2 and C3 settings, so you can have a preset for each condition.
Excellent
Always at the right brightness. Sony makes it look so easy I wonder why no other camera company has this working properly yet – and it’s critical to being able to see what you’re doing.
Finder Update Rate
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Finder update rate during continuous shooting
Good
Updates at only shooting rate.
Good
Usually updates at shooting rate.
Very Good if you work in a mode where the High speed display option can increase the finder frame rate above the shooting rate.
Good
Updates at only shooting rate.
(A9: Excellent; smooth, unblinking live finder display even while running at 20 FPS.)
Finder blacks-out during exposures longer than
Poor
Blacks out for all exposure times, except in the highest frame rate setting where it doesn’t.
Excellent
Doesn’t black-out for exposures of 0.8s or less. Blacks-out during exposures of 1s or longer.
Poor
Blacks out for all exposure times, except in the highest frame rate setting where it doesn’t.
Finder Sharpness
Very Good
Limited by viewfinder optics.
Very Good
Limited by viewfinder optics.
Very Good
Limited by viewfinder optics.
Level Display?
Poor
Large, grotesque graphic covers the subject — so you can’t compose with the level display active!
Excellent
Well-designed display shows levels and doesn’t interfere too much with your composition.
Excellent
Well-designed display shows levels and doesn’t interfere too much with your composition.
Level Display in Face-Recognition or All-Area AF modes?
Yes
No
Weird design flaw doesn’t allow the level to display if you are in Face-Recognition or All-Area AF modes.
Yes
Distortion Correction shown live while shooting?
No
Only visible on playback.
Yes
The corrections are shown live as you compose!
There may be no correction with adapted lenses; I haven’t tried.
Focus Distance Display with Native Lenses?
no
There can be an uncalibrated bar that appears, but it only shows an ∞ mark and a flower icon with no actual distance marks in between.
Yes
Calibrated focus scale, with native RF lenses only.
Yes
Rough digital display with uncalibrated scale.
EVF noise in dark areas, dim indoors light
Visible
The live image in the EVF is pretty good, but you will see active noise in the dark areas. (Actual camera images are fine.)
None
The live image in the EVF looks great.
Overall EVF image quality and noise, outdoors at night
Poor
The live image in the EVF is horribly noisy, dark and unsaturated. (Actual camera images are fine.)
Very Good
The live image in the EVF is surprisingly good, much cleaner and more colorful than in the Z7. It gets softer in very dim light, but much better than the noisy black mess in the Z7’s finder.
Exposure Mode Displayed as you set it?
Fair
Tiny letter in lower left. Even tinier indication for U1, U2 or U3 mode.
Excellent
Big display.
Excellent
Big display.
Stage Score (points out of 12)
9
Great finder, but sloppy level display and iffy auto brightness control.
10
Great finder with best displayed range of data, but requires manual brightness control.
11
World’s best, the only one with good auto brightness control.
Controls
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** In addition to the focus ring, Canon adds another programmable ring. Nikon lets you reprogram the focus ring, but if you do you lose manual focus control. Sony doesn’t do any of this.
Top Display
top
Ergonomics & Menus
top
U1/2/3, C1/2/3 & M1/2/3 Preset Recalls
top
* All save resolution, file type, White Balance, Picture Controls/Styles, ISO and Auto ISO settings. Nikon doesn’t recall most of its SETUP menu, like Non-CPU lens data, brightness & crops, while Canon does.
Playback
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Nikon Z7 & Z6
Canon EOS R & EOS RP
Sony A7 III, A7R3 & A9
Banding in blue areas?
Yes
Skies show banding when viewed full-frame or at reduced sizes both through EVF and on LCD, as other Nikon DSLRs sometimes do. Images look great when zoomed and the images themselves look great downloaded.
No
No
Automatic Playback Rotation as camera rotated between horizontal and vertical, just like an iPhone?
No
No
Yes
Histogram shown for small areas while playback is zoomed?
Yes
Pressing magnify buttons while in histogram mode zooms image in the small window and shows the histogram for just what’s in the window.
No
Pressing magnify button while in histogram mode zooms image to fill the full screen, with no histogram.
A7 III: No
Pressing magnify button while in histogram mode zooms image to fill the full screen, with no histogram.
How to Change Playback Magnification Level
2 Fingers on Touch Screen
Multiple presses of + and − buttons
2 Fingers on Touch Screen
Tap button then spin top dial
Tap button then spin rear dial
How to Scroll around Zoomed Image
Finger on Touch Screen
4-way rear controller
Finger on Touch Screen
4-way rear controller
8-way rear nubbin
4-way rear controller
Inertia while scrolling around a zoomed image on the touch screen?
Yes
no
Power & Battery
top
Nikon Z7 & Z6
Canon EOS R & EOS RP
Sony A7 III, A7R3 & A9
Battery Life, real-world actual shooting
Excellent
More than enough capacity for a full day of shooting on one battery.
About 450 shots per charge poking around one shot at a time and playing back each one for landscape shooting.
1,000 ~ 1,500 shots if you just shoot and don’t spend much time playing back or setting menus.
Excellent (EOS R)
More than enough capacity for a full day of shooting on one battery.
About 1,000 shots per charge as I shoot in ECO mode, >7,000 shots with long continuous sports sequences or as little as 350 shots on your first charge piddling with setup and test shots.
Very Good (EOS RP)
Not quite as much capacity as the EOS R, Nikon or Sony’s top models, but the EOS RP has a smaller battery so it weighs much less.
Excellent
More than enough capacity for a full day of shooting on one battery.
OK to Leave Power ON While Walking Around?
YES
Usually goes to sleep by itself in 30 seconds, settable from 10s to forever at MENU > Custom (Pencil) > c3 Power off delay > Standby timer. I set my delay to 10 seconds.
There’s no significant benefit to turning off the power unless you’re putting it away in a case.
Usually
Regardless of how I set my menus, my EOS R goes to sleep in 1 minute and the top LCD turns off in 4 minutes. (The top LCD always shows the exposure mode, even with the camera turned off).
Since it runs for a minute after you’re done shooting, there might be some benefit to turning off the switch after each shot.
No
A design flaw prevents Sonys from going to sleep when worn around your neck. They detect your body next to the finder and mistakenly confuse that with your eye and active usage, so they don’t go to sleep unless you set them down on a table or tripod.
Battery Charging
In-Camera via USB C
or
External Charger
Included dorky charger needs a cord or stub. No charge-level indicator, just a “charge or done” LED.
As shipped, you can charge one battery in the camera while you charge a second in the included charger!
External Charger
Excellent included folding-plug charger with a two-color blink-coded charge-level indicator.
USB C PD
It won’t charge with regular USB chargers, but if you use a special USB-C PD (power delivery specification) charger often used with laptop computers it ought to charge in-camera.
In-Camera via USB C or Micro B
or
External Charger
External charger has a charge-state bar graph, but needs a cord. Optional with A7 III and included with A7R3 and A9.
As shipped with the A7R3 and A9, you can charge one battery in the camera while you charge a second in the included charger!
AC Adapter
Included folding-plug to USB C EH-7P AC adapter
optional $145 AC Adapter Kit ACK-E6.
via USB C or Micro B and included AC-UUD12 1.5A adapter.
Stage Score (points out of 12)
11
Excellent battery life, auto-sleeping and USB charging. Crummy charger, but you don’t have to use it and if you do you can charge two batteries at once!
10
Excellent battery life and charger and good auto-sleeping, but no free in-camera charging.
9
Excellent battery life but poor auto-sleeping and probably only USB charging depending on model, but if you get the external charger it’s very good and lets you charge two batteries at once.
Data & Formatting
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Nikon Z7 & Z6
Canon EOS R & EOS RP
Sony A7 III, A7R3 & A9
Card Formatting
Excellent
Cards formatted fast and properly titled as “NIKON Z 7” or “NIKON Z 6.”
Excellent
Cards formatted fast and titled as “EOS_DIGITAL.”
Poor
Cards take a while to format and are left untitled and loaded with junk folders. Arbitrarily titled as either “Untitled” or “NO NAME” depending on the slot!
Automatic daily new folder creation?
no
no
YES
Every day can have a new folder added to your card with that day’s images if you set MENU > Suitcase > page 6/7 > Folder Name > Date Form.
Stage Score (points out of 4)
3
3
3
Quality & Customer Support
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Nikon Z7 & Z6
Canon EOS R & EOS RP
Sony A7 III, A7R3 & A9
Camera Quality
Made in Japan
Made in Japan
China (A7 III, A7R3)
or Thailand (A9).
Lens Quality
Thailand
Made in Japan
China or Thailand
Lens Adapter Quality
FTZ: Made in Japan
Control Ring Adapter: Taiwan
LA-EA4: Made in Japan
Customer Support
Fair
I rarely get definitive answers at (800) NIKON-US opt. 1, opt 1, and that’s only if they’re open (they’re only open 9AM~8PM ET work days Mon-Fri). While they’re US based, whoever picks up the phone always seems to have to go away and research every question; they don’t know anything off the tops of their heads. Sad!
Excellent
100% competent, 1-on-1 live USA support. Try them at (800) OK-CANON. Every time I call, the first person to pick up the phone always knows the answer right off the top of their head. They’re so good they were able to answer a question about my Nikon Z7 while Nikon’s support line was closed!
I don’t know; I haven’t needed to call (877) 899-SONY and find out. I’ve heard they’re somewhere between Canon and Nikon.
Stage Score (points out of 12)
7
Nikon seems to look at customers as annoyances and makes most things overseas, even if the Z7 body is made domestically.
12
Canon both cares about its customers and makes almost everything domestically.
7
Sony offshore almost everything to wherever it’s cheapest.
Weights
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* Actual measured weights.
Prices
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2019 February
2018 September
Best for
top
Total Scores*
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* Completely arbitrary scale from above arbitrary stage scores as felt by a photographic artist with over 50 years of daily shooting experience. These cameras are all good and the scores are actually pretty close; I did the scores for fun, and they reflect what I feel intuitively: Canon has the fewest rough edges and wins. If you’re already bought into any of these three brands, stick with that brand because they are all great cameras. The good thing about all this is how good all three brands are.
Background
I’ve used the Sonys for years, I’ve had the Canon EOS-R for a week or two and shot a little with a prototype of the Nikon Z7.
The Nikon Nikon Z6 is the same as the Nikon Z7 except for free-run frame rate and resolution.
Most of Sony’s other cameras are very similar to the A7 III, with a little more restricted (or absent) silent mode and different resolutions and frame rates.
Fuji has no full-frame cameras so they don’t play here. They’re good for people photos, but I’m not a fan of their colors for anything else.
I’m one of the very few people who has shot them all, so here is my real hands-on from someone who actually shoots all day rather than just talks about it. To those of us who shoot more than talk, how a camera handles and how its images actually look is far more important than technical specs, which actually have very little to do with anything due to things like Pixel Dumping. I’ll leave the pixel counting to the armchair enthusiasts; I have pictures to make.
Recommendations
All these systems are excellent. All of them have The Mirrorless Advantage over DSLRs.
Sony has been the established leader with a 5-year head start. Technically Sony is a generation ahead of Nikon or Canon, but when you actually shoot with these cameras you immediately realize that the Canon or Nikon are what you really want.
Sonys have always had an obtuse menu interface that requires us to look everywhere to find anything. Sony’s bodies are uncomfortable to hold for any length of time due to iffy or absent industrial design. We don’t love the handling or menus of our Sonys, but we love the way they shoot once we get them set up the way we want them.
Nikon and Canon are a joy to hold and shoot, and their menu systems are the clear and well laid out ones we already know. Likewise, Nikon and Canon retain their superb color rendition, while the Sonys give merely OK colors, at least if you’re as picky as I am (color rendition is always a personal artistic preference). Color accuracy, a technical measurement, is unrelated to color quality or color rendition, which are artistic qualities.
We all have our preferences, and this guide may guide you, For instance, I don’t like that Canon is missing an auto brightness control on its finder, but the fact that all my EF lenses work flawlessly, it’s the only model on which the shutter closes when you turn it off, it has a superior touch screen AF selector during EVF shooting and the EOS-R has a clever new Fv mode makes up for that. The Nikon’s shutter stays open, collecting dust like Sony when it’s off and it has only mediocre compatibility with old lenses, but it has a superior finder and one more control dial than the Canon. If you’re starting from nothing, I find Nikon and Canon equally attractive overall, unless you have a real need for one or another area in which one excels. I wouldn’t buy into Sony today unless you need the A9 for sports for this fall season or prefer two cards over good handling. We’re all different; if you are OK with Sony’s handing and color rendition then Sony is a generation ahead technically.
The final answer is that you should get whichever brand you already love; they are all surprisingly wonderful. Nikon and Canon’s brand-new mirrorless are amazingly excellent. If you’re invested in either Canon or Nikon, their new mirrorless work the same as your DSLR – just better – and give the same colors you love. If you’re already in Sony and if you love the menu system and in-hand-feel, then stick with them.
This 100% all-content, no-ad website’s biggest source of support is when you use those or any of these links to my personally-approved sources when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live. None of these brands seal its boxes in any way, so never buy at retail or any other source not on my personally approved list since you’ll have no way of knowing if you’re missing accessories, getting a defective, damaged, returned, non-USA, store demo or used camera. Get yours only from the trusted sources I’ve used personally for decades for the best prices, service, return policies and selection. Thanks for helping me help you! Ken.
Thanks for helping me help you!
Ken, Mrs. Rockwell, Ryan and Katie.
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