Why?
I have also always had Nikons, and recently got a Canon. I have gone a little off photography in recent years, and my wife is now the main photographer. The Nikon was big and heavy, and she wasn’t very happy with the quality anymore. We were mainly using cheap, slow zoom kit lenses. Optics weren’t fantastic, and slow apertures meant poor photos in low light, no great bokeh and this sort of thing. We felt the few simple primes we had were also not cutting it. I ended up getting a mirrorless Canon, but was also not sold on the quality and it doesn’t get used much.
My feeling is that we might be spoiled by better and better cameras on phones. Software wizardry is replacing amazing old school optics and creating pictures that are pleasing to the eye when watched on a screen (so 99.99% of the time), not to mention the convenience of having the camera in your hand all of the time anyway. Professionals would probably frown and say it is cheating, not worthy etc., but we are not professionals and we don’t care - we just want to point-and-shoot photos that we can enjoy looking at.
Before getting the Canon I tried to persuade my wife that a better phone is what she would want, not another “real” camera. She wasn’t convinced and we got the mirrorless, but reality is the quality of the photos doesn’t justify the inconvenience. We would need to put in much more effort (and maybe better lenses) to make it worth while.
So ended up getting my wife a new phone and she is finally happy with the photos. It’s not even a flagship, and the cost was less than half the price of the Canon body with a basic kit zoom lens.
