Nikon versus Canon: A Story Of Technology Change

Nikon losing the leadership position to Canon in the market for professional photography is a story involving technology transitions over a period of 30 or more years as told in this annotated twitter thread.

Annotations in italics.

The Canon F-1 mechanical film camera from 1971 had over 10,000 parts. It was designed to compete with the Nikon F released 12 years earlier (with fewer parts) and despite the complexity was not really a competitive risk.

Schematic of the Canon F-1.

This is an artistic schematic of the Nikon F. This is so amazing and can be found on shirts and prints on Esty!

I was asked in a follow-up where the 10,000 parts number came from. Here’s the 1971 brochure from Canon Japan with this tagline. Interestingly it is clearly hyperbole and also a tricky Japanese translation (does it means the system or the camera?).

Canon F-1 brochure from 1971 showing 10,000 parts.

Another English-language translation of Canon’s hyperbole/poor translation :-)

The Canon “system” (1) was designed to compete with the Nikon F system, which had 10 years of ecosystem growth.

Less than a year after Canon, Nikon released the culmination of a 5 year project, the F2 (2), which overwhelmed Canon which barely resembled 1962 Nikon System (3).

(1) This is the Canon F-1 system from 1971 at launch.

(2) Released a few months later this is the Nikon F2 System. It is simply overwhelming. Lenses ranged from 6mm (giant round one on the left edge with 220° field of view) to 2000mm (upper left telescope looking thing, the longest camera lens ever). There were accessories yet to envisioned by Canon.

(3) This is the 1962 Nikon F System. As you can see the Canon F-1 system from 1971 is about the same scope as this system. This was a case of Canon skating to where the puck *was*.

Nikon took a very conservative approach to adding features having secured (and defended) the professional market. 8 years later they released the Nikon F3 which *required* batteries for the *first time*, but even had a backup mechanical shutter release that was heavily marketed. As crazy as it sounds, professionals, especially National Geographic types on assignment, were terrified of running out of batteries so Nikon catered to them. My first camera on my own was an F3 and all the reviews (which I memorized) at the time mentioned this manual shutter release.

Here is a launch review of the F3 from 1980 and you can see how much ink was devoted to batteries! This isn’t everything as there is a whole lot more about how the motor drive took 8 AA batteries that could power the camera, but they don’t work in cold weather and…

Nikon’s broad advertising was relentless but focused almost entirely on professionals. The basic view was, it seems, to sell consumer cameras because the professionals used them. The little button/lever below the chrome one on the left is the emergency manual shutter release.

By contrast, Canon used tried and true celebrity endorsement from non-photographers (mostly sports) highlighting ease of use and broad appeal.

All along Nikon was incredibly innovative with consumer cameras where they felt they could “experiment”. Nikon released dozens of models with automatic exposure, fancy metering, integrated motor drives, and eventually even auto focus in 1986. Many more consumer models than pro!

Nikon had an incredibly broad range of cameras with a large number of consumer models but their focus and business was really about professionals where they did not really expand the model lineup rapidly or broadly. The Nikon F was 1959; F2 in 1971; F3 in 1980; F4 (autofocus) 1988; and on the heels of the digital revolution the F5 in 1996.

This is from the Tokyo Olympics (I believe) in 1964. There are only Nikon cameras and notice the uniformity. By the way, the lenses with the chrome ring are an 85–250mm lens, the equivalent of today’s 80–200 professional zoom. This was introduced in 1959 and was the first commercial zoom lens from Japanese makers.

Nikon was broadly associated with photography and of course was mentioned in Simon & Garfunkel’s “Kodachrome”…”I got a Nikon camera/I love to take a photograph /So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away”. This is a gallery of 1960s and 1970s celebrities just taking pictures with Nikons.

Into the 1980s, Nikon was the only choice for professionals. This is a shot of a gallery of sports photographers (at a track of some type).

Also Nikon was very busy working with Kodak on pioneering digital cameras. All through the 1990s there were incredible advances that relied on Nikon camera bodies and optics and Kodak digital sensors.

This is an early prototype of a digital camera based on a Nikon camera body with a Kodak sensor in the camera and all the image capture and translation done in the off board box connected by cables. This one, I believe had a 1MB monochrome image and took about 30 seconds to capture. It was revolutionary in 1995 or so.

Nikon was even first to release professional digital cameras with the much anticipated Nikon D-1 in 1999.

Nikon’s D-1 pioneered the fully integrated and well-designed SLR body that is had been evolving since the F3. Nikon resisted digital broadly for products because professionals were skeptical of the quality. Digital camera sensors captured much less resolution than film at the time and there were endless arguments about compression. This is ironic because so much of photography had used film “grain” (essentially compression artifacts) as an artistic element. Professionals really resisted but this camera was revolutionary for daily news photographers (product-market fit!). I can tell lots of stories from news photog friends and my own experiences developing film in hotel rooms and closets. Crazy to think of, and they were happy to move on! To compromise, this sensor introduced the smaller frame size which meant lenses behaved with different fields of view, further confusing professionals and because frame size=quality in film it further “amateur-ized” the camera.

Canon could not win over pros. Nikon was innovating but was still all about Pros being in “control” and “conservative”, eg every lens from 1959 forward still worked on current cameras. #professional

In the photo 5 up of the press gallery with photogs in white caps, this is the lens on the left side. It was the first commercial zoom lens from November 1959 just 3 months after the F launch. Here is that lens mounted on the latest Nikon D850 introduced Fall 2017 (59 years later!)

Canon took a bold step and designed a whole new lens system around *autofocus*. It was vastly criticized by professionals and the press at the time for breaking compatibility with Canon’s existing FD mount (which itself had maintained compatibility over 3 generations of Canon lenses going back to the 1960s). This lens mount made driving autofocus much more efficient and fast and also easily supported automatic exposure known as “shutter priority” and “programmed” where Nikon on professional cameras only supported aperture priority until the F4 was released in 1988 (after Canon’s EF mount, but still compatible with the F mount) though the 1983 Nikon FA pro-sumer camera supported these automatic modes. I think we can draw some fascinating lessons from how professionals react to change from this since these patterns repeat and have repeated themselves.

This is the Canon EF (electronic focus) lens mount introduced in 1987. It broke with tradition of maintaining lens compatibility.

This was 1987! So there was still a long haul. Canon focused (ha) on consumers, ease of use, and reliability of electronics and began to win with a full range of autofocus lenses and gained expertise with consumer cameras.

They were going after Nikon from the underserved market.

By 2000’s Canon had built out a massive arsenal of both film and digital cameras.

While Nikon had invented [productized or commercialized] all the technology from electronic metering, to autofocus, to digital, Canon was going to use it all to win over professionals while Nikon was concerned about both cannibalization and just not serving professionals as well. See where this is going??

In 2000, right when Nikon released its Digital Pro SLR, Canon released one as well but had their much better autofocus lenses and all that experience, and was also willing to sacrifice “quality” for speed. Enter the Canon EOS digital line.

The Canon EOS D30 which was small and compact and not quite up to pro standards. It featured Canon’s len’s driven Auto Focus system and a wide range of EF AF lenses.

Professionals photogs, especially sports, were all about speed and saw the advantages of autofocus. Canon capitalized with an incredible range of lenses built from the start for autofocus and sports, along with these new digital bodies. Also they made their lenses white.

As no doubt everyone is familiar, this is what the sideline and courtside and gallery of every press event looks like—it is filled with these iconic white barreled Canon lenses. Originally a design statement but being Japanese it was justified with a product reason saying that white reflected sunlight and did not distort the optics (mostly nonsense).

From 1981, when Canon was developing autofocus here is a magazine article about how autofocus works. It is telling that they explain how it works from the perspective of Canon even though Nikon productized modern autofocus.

Autofocus explained in 1980. Note the use of Canon consumer examples in lower right.

Seemingly overnight Canon captured the professional market. This is Canon’s system today. While numerically they have about 60% market share, they have a much higher mindshare. Disruption happens two ways—first slowly and then quickly.

Today’s Canon system covers an incredible array. Also worth noting is that in the move to digital Canon also became a leader in full motion capture and share sensors and lenses with still photography. Today Nikon and Canon are neck and neck in lens coverage and quality as well as the specs for bodies and sensors. But now Nikon must contend with a UX model baked into professionals.

This is such a fascinating case of a company, Nikon, literally inventing the whole category, then reinventing it, pioneering every technology but falling victim to its own success — focus on existing needs, current limitations, and compatibility. Nikon still goes to space though!

Nikon in use aboard the International Space Station.

While Hasselblad went to the moon, Nikon was in space from the late 1960s through a close design partnership with NASA that peaked with massive ad campaigns in the 80s. Note the similar broad reach advertising focused on extreme professional use that would be used to draw in amateurs and consumers!

This kills me because, well, I have been using Nikon since my father gave me his 1971 F and I collect them. But I also think about this evolution and how technology incumbents can succumb to success. // end

PS/ Nikon did not invent the 35mm SLR! In fact it got into the business by making lenses for existing makers while it focused on professional rangefinder cameras (below). Nikon’s original corporate name was Nippon Kogaku, which translates as Japan Optical.

That said, the 1959 Nikon system was very much like the 1964 IBM 360 in scope, reuse, industry impact.

This is an early Nikon F system.

This is IBM’s view of the 701 computer featuring all the peripherals. IBM and Nikon both designed systems from the ground up by bringing together components previously invented and combining them into a complete platform/system that revolutionized the field. Sensing a pattern?

PPS/ In 1971 Canon tried to compete head-on w/Nikon, even with some parity, it offered nothing substantial that Nikon didn’t offer and had a much smaller “system” and ecosystem. Competing head-on rarely works. Reviews at the time “tried” to make it a race, but was’t even close.

Nikon got its start designing lenses for the leading rangefinder (versus single lens reflex) cameras of the time, Leica. Nikon began to develop its own cameras earlier but the reputation came from optics. Nikon’ corporate name in Japanese was Nippon Kogaku, which means Japan Optical. Nikon today makes leading microscopes and imaging tools of all kinds.

PPPS/ Was asked…1950’s Nikon made optics for Leica (can you believe!) the leader in rangefinder cameras used by Pros. Nikon clearly learned from that and much like China mfgs w/their own consumer brands, they went “first party” with the F system. FYI, Sony makes Nikon sensors.🤔 Nikon has been slowly displacing Sony sensors and the latest pro and pro-sumer cameras no longer use Sony sensors. And fwiw, Canon got into cameras by creating cheaper copies of other’s rangefinder cameras and using other company’s lenses. They then later moved into making lenses as well. See the pattern…

I will amend this with corrections I receive since posting anything about Nikon history or especially Nikon v. Canon will almost certainly get me in trouble.