Note: I’m going to buy the Canon 7d. Just so you know!

Welcome to the Nikon vs Canon camera death match!

I am in serious need of a new DSLR camera. I have been a Canon girl for as long as I can remember, but a few key friends of mine are Nikon users and you should see some of the beautiful pictures that come out of their digital studios. This has led to a lot of indecision on my part as far as what sort of camera I should buy when I finally do upgrade. I don’t have that much money invested in accessories — I’ve only bought a 50mm macro lens and a 430EX II flash — so if I was going to make the jump from Canon and Nikon, now would be my chance.

But the problem was, is Nikon really better than Canon? I’m definitely prone to gear lots and while I think that Nikon cameras take more saturated, evenly balanced photographs, I was a little wary of the fact that I was suffering from “grass is greener” syndrome.

So, in an effort to allay my fears and put my indecision to rest, I decided to conduct a an amateur Nikon vs Canon camera death match. I enlisted the help of my friend Ben, one of my photography friends that I really respect, and together, we put our cameras to test. My camera, an older Canon digital Rebel (so old, in fact, that it doesn’t even have any spiffy letters to go in the name) went up again his Nikon D90. Now, I’ll admit in the very beginning that his camera is much newer than mine, and probably has all sorts of neat features that mine doesn’t. But, in the end, I just wanted a quick comparison of image quality straight off the sensor, so I think that this test will work for my purposes.

Note: my friend Nate happened to come by while I was writing this post, and he mentioned that Lightroom can read raw files differently (and apparently, somewhat inaccurately) when compared to the individual Canon/Nikon raw tools that come with the cameras. He believes that this may be the cause of the different color casts in the images. This very well may be true, but for the purpose of this test I’m going to accept Lightroom as a baseline because that’s what I use. But for those of you out there who are really interested in an exhaustive comparison, you might want to keep this in mind.

Nikon vs Canon Cameras, Who Will Reign Supreme?

Ok, I’ve rambled enough. Let’s get to the photos. The subjects are all food (because Ben and I are geeks like that), so be forewarned. All images were taken from a tripod at ISO 200 with a 50mm 1.8 lens.

The first pair of images is of a cheddar cheese plate my friend Kirstin (cheese goddess extraordinaire) set up for us. These two images were taken with a set of Ego lights, lit from two directions from behind.

These images were both taken at f14, 1/5 sec. Notice how the Canon image is more evenly color balanced while the second image, from the Nikon, has a reddish cast:

Canon:

Nikon:

These images have not been altered at all, so the Nikon is definitely warmer. More magenta, even. This may be why I believed that Nikons take more saturated photos. Now look at the histograms:

Canon:

Nikon:

There’s definitely more color present in the mids of the Nikon image (and here is where I admit that I can only marginally read a histogram, so if you have more input about this, please leave a comment).

These next two images were taken at f4, 1/10 sec. We used no lights beyond the tungsten light of the overhead fixture, and in both cases, the light meters read as correctly exposed. No digital edits were made to these photos.

Canon:

Nikon:

Here, the Canon shot is much warmer than the Nikon image, which looks much more balanced. And the histograms:

Canon:

Nikon:

The next images are of a roquefort cheese on a white plate with to Ego lights lighting from behind. You’ll notice there’s not a lot of different here, though the Canon image is slightly greener than Nikon image, which has a gentle magenta cast (especially in the pecans):

Canon:

Nikon:

Here are the same images with a touch of editing in Lightroom. I boosted the exposure in both images by +1.25 and white balanced them to +3 temp and +1 tint:

Canon:

Nikon:

Again, not a huge difference besides the green versus magenta casts.

These next two images are a plate of meatballs shot with one Ego lighting from behind and to the right, though we increased the shutter speed to see how the cameras compared when it comes to low light detail. These were shot at f1.8, 1/160 sec. You’ll notice that the Nikon shot has a more pronounced magenta cast than the Canon:

Canon:

Nikon:

The meatballs are more visible and look more vibrant in the Nikon shot. But how will they look after postprocessing? Here are the same images with a few minor edits – exposure bumped up +.75 and white balanced to +7 temp and +3 tint:

Canon:

Nikon:

Now the Canon shot looks much more appetizing, doesn’t it? The Nikon image looks sort of like it’s been colored with red dye.

And the final shot, a persimmon shot from behind and to the right with a single Ego light and a bounce card slightly behind and to the left. Shot at f9, 1/10 sec. Again, notice how the Canon image is more muted while the Nikon shot is more vibrant, more luminous and noticeably warmer:

Canon:

Nikon:

And now with a little postprocessing. For these images, the exposure has been bumped up to +1.25 with a little fill light enhancement (+10):

Canon:

Nikon:

The Nikon image is incredibly orange and luminous, but the Canon image looks much more true to life and just real. The persimmon almost looks fake when photographed with the Nikon and put through minimal adjustments.

So, where does this leave me in my indecision? I entered into this test wanting a Nikon because from what I’d seen, the images were more saturated right out of the gate. Turns out, they’re just warmer – which is not always a good thing. When it comes down to it, I feel like the Canon may be more consistently true to life, and if you want to oversaturate your images, you can use Lightroom/Photoshop/whathaveyou.

That said, if I had no money invested in accessories, I would probably go with the Nikon because I like the overall look and feel of the images. But the differences between the two brands are just not enough to cause me to jump ship and have to re-buy my equipment.

The Verdict: Nikon vs Canon Cameras

Both the Nikon and Canon cameras produced great-looking images, though the Nikon shots are more warmly saturated and the Canon shots appear to be more true to life. I’m sticking with my Canon, but would be happy with a Nikon as well. Buy whichever’s cheaper for you and has an interface that is more intuitive to the way your brain works.

I’ll probably end up buying the Canon 50d or the 7d. It’s more of a cost issue at this point, and we’ll have to see how much I want to spend when it comes times to actually make the purchase.

So…………

What camera do you use and why? Did you switch from Canon to Nikon, or vice versa? Did you perform your own tests, and what did you find? Why are you loyal to one brand over the other?

Also, ipicking between the 50d and the 7d, which would you pick and why?

I’ve been perusing Amazon.com for holiday gifts, and I just came across a good deal on KitchenAid mixers. I know a lot of you out there are dying for one of these babies, so I thought I’d share:

• KitchenAid Artisan 5-Quart Stand Mixers in a HUGE variety of colors, only $269 (free shipping and no sales tax)
• The smaller KitchenAid Classic 250-Watt 4-1/2-Quart Stand Mixer in White, only $198 (free shipping and no sales tax)

Also, Amazon’s got a great deal on the BlendTec blender:

• Blendtec Home 1500-Watt Total Blender, $399 (you have to click on the black model… for some reason the white one is $20 more.)

Other deals I’ve posted:

• Agave Nectar for Cheap
• Pamela’s Gluten Free Cornbread Mix (perfect for the holidays!)

Don’t forget to enter to win your own Shun Ken Onion chef’s knife, a $250 value. Contest ends at midnight Sunday, PST

So far in the kitchen knives series, we’ve talked about what cutlery is made of and which knives are the most important for home cooks to own. Today we’re continuing on about knife selection, looking at a few specialized models – including my personal favorite, the meat cleaver. >=)!

Specialized Knives & Cutlery

You might not need to go out and buy any of these babies, but they’re all fun to use!

The Santoku Knife

Santokus have become super popular lately. Originating in Japan, the word santoku means “three values,” which indicates that it’s a handy, all around good knife to have. Santokus are shorter and generally have a more rounded tip, making them lighter and easier to wield. While they’re not as versatile as a chef’s knife, santoku knives are great for performing a variety of tasks, such as chopping and slicing.

Note: those little divots on the blade’s edge, known as the “Granton edge,” are not part of the traditional design of the knife. They came much later, in the beginning of the 20th century. Many high-quality santokus don’t have them, so don’t let their presence influence your decision when shopping.

Cheese Knives

Almost everyone’s got one of these lying in a drawer somewhere, lost among the rest of their flatware. Cheese knives come in all shapes and sizes, from short, rounded blades to pointy affairs with a big piece missing out of the middle.

Crumbly cheese benefits from small cleaver-like knives that slice easily without complete annihilation. Rounded cheese knives are more for spreadable cheeses, while “skeleton knives” (with an open space in the blade) work great on cheese that is semi-firm. Skeleton knives minimize the amount of friction present when slicing, preventing your slices from stretching or distorting into a weird crumpled shape. Definitely not good eats.

Cleavers

There are two primary kinds of cleavers: one for vegetables and one for meat. What’s the difference? Vegetables cleavers are thinner than their meaty counterparts, with a narrow edge that slices through veggies with ease. Super sharp and very lightweight, these cleavers can be used similarly to a chef’s knife if you know what you’re doing.

Meat cleavers, on the other hand, are hefty, weighty weapons made with one purpose in mind: cutting through meat and bone. As gruesome as it sounds, they do this job amazingly well. Their blades are less tapered, making them extremely durable, and they can be used for chopping right through a chicken carcass or hacking away at a lamb shank. The broad spine and sides can be used for anything from crushing to pounding.

I love cleavers because, well, I’m crazy like that. I love the fact that I can cut through an entire duck in one swift whack – I’ve been known to frighten company by dismantling an entire bird in four second. Word to the wise: DO NOT GET YOUR HAND IN THE WAY OF THIS THING. If you think a cleaver makes short work of beef bones, you don’t want to see what it will do to your fingers. *shiver*

Sushi Knives (aka, the Yanagi)

Japanese sushi knives are long and narrow, easily slicing through fish without shredding the tender flesh. The goal of these knives, which range from 8″-13″, is to allow the chef to cut through fish in a single, backward stroke without having to reposition the knife. The Japanese believe that the way foods are cut have a huge bearing on how they taste, so these knives have been specially designed to maintain the integrity of sushi-quality fish.

Don’t forget to enter to win your own Shun Ken Onion chef’s knife, a $250 value.

Next in our learning about cutlery series, we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty. With such a wide selection of knives on the market, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of options. Do you have to spend $1000 on a 583-piece butcher block set? Do you really need that cleaver designed specifically for taking down a buffalo? Actually, you don’t. With a few carefully selected pieces, you’ll make short work of 90% of your kitchen tasks – and love doing it.

Which Knife Do You Need?

So, what are the most important knives to know? I’d say you need three: a paring knife, a serrated bread knife, and a chef’s knife.

Paring Knives

Let’s start small: measuring in at between two and four inches long, paring knives are short blades with a pointy tip. Despite their dinky size, these versatile pieces of cutlery are an integral part of your cooking arsenal. Paring knives are great tools for scoring, peeling, boning (get yer mind out of the gutter, you pervs), and anything else you that requires a small point with maximum control. Navigating small areas is something you’ll do frequently as a home chef, and the paring knife is made with these tasks in mind.

Serrated Bread Knives

Serrated bread knives are great for cutting anything that’s crusty on the outside and delicate on the inside. Think baguettes, bagels, and pineapples: you want something hard core enough to get through the tougher outer part while not obliterating the lovely fleshy bits. Serrated knives also make quick work of tomatoes and citrus, easily slicing through their teflon-like skin.

Chef’s Knives

A chef’s knife is your all-around workhorse. They’re made to do almost anything, excelling at chopping vegetables, slicing winter squash and cutting through chicken bones. A solid chef’s knife will should be heavy, but not to the point that you’ll get fatigued using it for a long period of time – as such, it’s super important to try them out at the store before selecting a model!

Chef’s knives can come in all sorts of sizes – 7″ to 10″ are the most popular – and their weights can range all over the map as well. Solid Wustoffs are serious, hefty blades, while Globals are lighter and easier to wield. Which you use depends completely on your height, the shape of your hand, your upper body strength, etc.

We’ll go more into selecting a specific model later. But for now, do you have a favorite knife? Which is it, and what do you use it for most?

You might check out these posts from other food bloggers:

• Choosing a Knife: Metals and Materials (wasabimon)
• Reasons for Buying a Quality Chef’s Knife (christies-corner)
• Choosing a Chef’s Knife (chilicheesefries)

Monday we started off the cutlery series by announcing a huge drawing for your very own Shun Ken Onion 8″ chef’s knife. Didja enter? You should.

Today we’re going to start at the very beginning: metals. Knives can be made of a range of materials, and if you’ve ever shopped for cutlery, you’ve probably read a billion different metal-related buzzwords. Stainless, carbon, high carbon… what’s the difference? Here are some of the most common metals you might hear of when researching kitchen cutlery:

Carbon Steel

Kitchen knives have been made from carbon steel for centuries. Carbon steel is essentially iron with a little carbon added in, which makes for a stronger blade that keeps an edge much longer than a solid iron blade. While these knives are known for being solid workhorses, they also rust easily and don’t stand up very well to acidic compounds. If properly seasoned, carbon blades can become more resistant to breakdown.

Still, a good carbon steel knife will last forever if properly cared for, and some folks relish the dark stains they develop as they would stripes on a military uniform. Even though the market has been taken over by newfangled stainless steel cutlery, carbon steel knives are still treasured by chefs who appreciate a solid kitchen tool.

Stainless Steel

In the early 20th century, stainless steel was developed by adding chromium to carbon steel to make it more durable and resistant to rust. Stainless steel is also much slower to corrode when exposed to acids (hence the name stainless steel, duh). It’s important to note, though, that no steel knife is completely invincible – they all break down when exposed to acids, salts, and moisture. This is why you’re supposed to wash and dry your knife immediately after using it, but you already knew that, right?

Other factors: stainless knives don’t take an edge as well as carbon steel blades, and they’re more of a bear to sharpen. This is why knife manufacturers are always futzing with their metal mixtures, trying to come up with the perfect balance of strong/sharp/soft/etc. Recipes for steel are almost as prolific as recipes for cookies, and they’re kept under lock and key.

High-Carbon Stainless Steel

High carbon stainless steel is basically stainless steel with a little more carbon added (get it, high carbon?). This is supposed to make the knife both stain resistant and more capable of holding an edge, though the jury is still out as to how effective this is in practical, every day use. While high carbon cutlery may hold its edge a little longer than standard stainless steel, it’s not by a huge margin.

Damascus Steel

Damascus, or pattern welded steel, is more of a process than a type of metal. By taking a few different kinds of steel and layering them together, artisan knife-makers achieve unique patterns in their cutlery. Take a peek and you’ll notice that Damascus knives have interesting-looking patterns throughout the metal blade, and these patterns actually go all the way through the knife. Anything called “Damascus-look” isn’t really damascus at all; it’s most likely a superficial pattern that just looks pretty.

Damascus knives are super expensive but woo-wee, are they gorgeous. Someday I’ll get my mitts on a custom Bob Kramer knife… once I’m rich and famous. Actually, pattern welding is something I’ve always been interested in. I’d love to actually make my own someday.

Other Metals

Knife manufacturers put all sorts of metals in their steel mixtures. They can contain such compounds as cobalt, nickel, manganese, and others, each having their own properties. There’s no such thing as “the perfect knife” – each manufacturer will tell you that their steel recipe is the best for X and Y reasons. In the end they’re all pretty similar, and unless you’re interesting in becoming a major metallurgy geek, the only way to truly understand which knives are stronger and sharper is to use them yourself.

Ceramic

Clearly, this isn’t a metal at all. Ceramic knives are becoming more popular these days, and they’ve got a few advantages: they’re super lightweight, they keep an edge for an extraordinarily long time, and they don’t stain, rust, or react to acids. The downside is that they can chip or shatter if not cared for properly, and that’s a big bummer.

Ceramic knives are a lot of fun to use. They cut through veggies like a light saber and their lack of heft makes them feel like an extension of your arm. Plus, there’s just something really satisfying about a super sharp white blade. It kind of turns me on.

Win Your Own Shun 8″ Chefs Knife!

And don’t forget to enter the “Shun Kitchen Knives are Bad Ass” Contest to win your own Shun Ken Onion 8″ chef’s knife. This baby will change the way you chop, that’s for sure.

Knives are arguably the most important piece of equipment in your kitchen. Sadly, many otherwise great home cooks don’t care enough to own good, solid cutlery, while others think they can’t afford the necessary tools of the trade. Both are poor excuses for such blasphemy! If you care about cooking at all, you will have at least one (if not several) high quality knives in your arsenal.

I plan to remedy this situation! Over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about kitchen knives – how to choose the knife that’s right for you, the difference between chopping styles, cutlery ergonomics, that sort of thing.

I won’t hide the fact that I’m giddy about the opportunity to pontificate on something I’m truly obsessed with. Anyone who knows me well understands that I have a thing for knives – in fact, I own several sets of professional throwing daggers. I might be diminutive in stature, but I’m not someone you want to piss off.

To kick off this cutlery series, I’m having a little contest. Sur la Table has been very kind to provide me with a gorgeous Shun Ken Onion 8″ chef’s knife, and I’m passing it on to one of you lucky readers. This beauty, which would run you up to $250 in stores, will be given away in a random drawing on Monday, June 15th, just in time for Fathers Day.

Here’s a little more about the knife, straight from Sur la Table:

“Designed by legendary custom knife maker Ken Onion, this chef’s knife is a must-have for collectors of Shun and other quality cutlery. Flowing, ergonomic design fits the hand flawlessly for extraordinary balance and effortless rocking. VG-10 steel blade clade with 16 layers of stainless steel for a beautiful rust-free Damascus-look blade. Bamboo holder. 8¼” blade.”

I have one of these knives, and I just have to say this: it’s f**king bad ass.

How do you win it? Well, that’s easy. There are a few ways to enter the drawing:

• Post a link to this post to your Twitter account, with the words, “@sstiavetti is giving away a Shun Ken Onion 8″ chef’s knife at Wasabimon.com! http://rubyurl.com/IgCz ” Then post a reply here with your Twitter username for one entry.
• Give this post a thumbs-up on StumbleUpon, and leave a comment here with your StumbleUpon username for one entry. Don’t forget to hit the big green THUMBS UP button or it won’t work. Better, yet, leave a short review to make sure I see your entry.
• Post a link to this post to your Tumblr account, with the same wording above as for Twitter. Leave a comment here with a link to your post.
• Post a link to this post to your Facebook account, with the same spiel above. And again, LEAVE A COMMENT!
• Digg this post and leave a comment here with your Digg username.

You can enter up to five times, once for each service I mentioned above. If you want to post this elsewhere too, I’ll probably give you an extra entry if you tell me where in a comment.

Perhaps you’re seeing a trend here… you have to LEAVE A COMMENT! The last time I had a contest, people were posting links all over the place but never said anything about it here. So, please… do yourself a favor and leave a comment here! Fer serious, I’m not friggin kidding!!

Here’s a BIG TIP to make this all even easier for you: do you see a row of snazzy little buttons just under this post, about an inch down the page? Those buttons go straight to the sites you need to use to enter the drawing. Just click those buttons to do the deed, following through to make sure you’ve completed the process, then leave a comment here.

Ok, I think I’ve gotten my point across.

Good luck!!!