canon vs nikon, or is there anything else a pro would consider?

Canon and Nikon. Probably, the only brands that street/wedding pros would go for this year. For some cases also Pentax is ok for a pro. I am not talking about medium or large format cameras for studio shots only in this article. I am talking about a pro, (or a company that needs pros) such as a news agency. But why not also the average weekend warrior that is also a photography guy. 

You will need a bit of everything these days. HD video, hi ISO, zoom lenses, batteries, memory cards etc.

All this, summed up, makes you put your hand well deep in your pocket. Most people who read reviews do not just understand, even if they are presented with a huge amount of figures, what is the difference between a camera that costs 3500$ and a camera that costs 350$ which is 10 times less.

There are plenty of videos going viral, that show products getting damaged just for the shake of it. So some people will compare these products and say: "oh look, this phone has a better screen than that phone."

But how many people have seen videos of testing a pro camera for is anti-shock design?

How many pros can say with a convincing amount of certainty that this camera can sustain this amount of damage and still work?

Maybe I am not good at testing my gear and maybe I am not good at searching on the web for reliable tests. You will see in the speq book of any camera things like "plastic body", 6-9 fps depending on the power source and other pathetic statements! 

Those of the readers that have actually packed a their stuff to go to a "war" or any form of revolution/public uproar etc, must have noticed that the truth is revealed on the field of action.

You get minimum 3 camera bodies, some action HD recorder (to register more images that are undisputable), and all that equipment that leaves you no space for other personal items in a very tightly packed bag.

And there you are!

It's time for action! Its raining bullets (plastic or real!), people around you are getting killed or injured, and you get some pictures that are meant to be "very impressive" for the guy who will read the morning news in some public transportation whilst going to his work if you are a pro.

But NOOOOOO.. you go to your office if you escape alive from the battlefield and as you empty all these gigabytes of data to your computer, you see that 99% of your pictures are not "publishable"!

What happened to these 50000 dollars/euros/bp etc that you have spent for your equipment?

So, you were reading all these reviews about this and that lens that is focusing super-mega-ultra fast, you bought them and all your night shots are blurry!

You bought a camera capable of ISO 3million (just a way of saying.. currently I think it 100000 plus iso cams available) plus so you can get some night shots and you got 2000mm f1.4 super lens so you can even get the most distant thing possible in the middle of the night.

During the action though, everything collapsed! 

So, where were the real reviews?

1. Those that measure the true focus performance of a camera body/lens combination.
2. Those who will show you the real focus response to a low light condition
3. Those who will show how water-proof is a "water-proof" body/lens/flash/grip etc.
4. And who would be the target audience for such camera test publications?
5. How many models would be available for such comparisons?

Dpreview has made some outdoors "water-proof" cameras' tests.

Even there, I do not think that they tested the "water-proof" feature in real case scenarios.

Apart from covering some protests in the past, I am the kind of guy who wants to use his equipment everywhere.

(not like those peaceful in UK or Austria, we are talking about chemicals and tear gas that would justify a US attack if there was any oil in these places where I took the pics)

All my personal equipment is based on sony/minolta/sigma/tamron stuff.

But who wrote for me an article showing the progressive decay of the lens performance?

Most of my lenses were subjected to humidity as used to live in an island.

In less than four months, the sound of the focusing system almost tripled its loudness and I can see that from videos I was making using the same old sony bloggie from the same distance from the cam as I was shooting.

Dust and sand entered almost all of my lenses! For some I had to pay almost their initial cost to fix them.

But who (apart from a tiny, almost unreadable, script on their manual) ever talked about it?

All I see is results from static tests.

1. Is there a focusing performance index?
2. Is there an index describing how fast the camera/lens turns itself to junk?
3. What about this "buffer"? Come on! Even android devices have 2 gigs of ram now!

All I see is some relation to the card's speed in writing sequential images!

What about those "raid" technologies with multiple cards and stuff?

Then it comes to the raw processing power requirements!

1. How many flops per pixel? 
2. I want to process 90 gigs (3*32 gigs cards) images, what software/hardware should I get? How long will it take?

Give me a point of reference!

Then we come to the raw file!

1. How is it structured?
2. What kind of info will I get there?
3. To which extend is it better as information/data structure from another raw file?

Dpreview and other sites are trying to get some information on every review, but always based on newly released models that are not "heavily" used during a "long" test.

What I want to see is how "living" with this thing feels like and some more math, figures, charts, raw data.. 

If a website starts doing such things and says as a verdict that "hey, look folks, we tried this and this combo of lens/cam (eg 15 copies for some statistically interesting results) versus another lens/cam combo (again, 15 copies for some statistically interesting results) and although when they were new and shiny the first was better in image quality, the second lasted much longer and after 3 months of extensive usage it is still alive whilst the other one is moslty freaking DEAD", then we would see a shifting from the buyers side towards the construction quality and durability rather just the image versus price quality criteria and then the camera manufacturers would have to follow the market's flow.

A friend of mine had a camera, that I would prefer not to state its' brand, and the camera occidentally dropped off the tripod as he was doing a continuous bracketing shot. A little thing that the camera had inside broke physically and the warranty was not covering it. If he knew that the camera is made so cheap, he 'd never buy it for almost 3k.

As for me personally, I have dismantled a lot of my broken lenses, and I see what means BAD quality since my job has to do with electronics and mathematics. I saw PCB's that even in the cheapest "made in china" fake charger/phone/etc would never appear. I have seem soldering in a 2004 produced 300GBP lens that a first year student project would fail if it had any soldering like it.

But do I dare as an individual to come out of the closet and say the truth?

• I ll get a bunch of law related professionals prosecuting me and try to bury my results and my life in a mountain of lies.

That's why some big (independent) publishing house should do this.

Tell the people the truth.

• What about the statistics from the camera repair centres?
• Why they are not officially published?

To say straight and honestly that "hey, look, this and this batches of this and this product are defective" Just say it straight away. Not having to look for forum posts like searching gorillas in the mist AFTER purchasing some expensive thing only to find out that many others had wasted their money on it as well.

• Am I wrong?
• Do I want something that is unfair?