Quote Originally Posted by Mark L View Post
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"Reasons for Nikon are that more people seem to favour Nikon". More people who replied favoured them. Maybe the others were out taking photos.
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LOL!

Feel definitely is probably the single most important aspect of any hand held device to take into consideration.

But don't let statistics fool you! ... more folks owning stuff doesn't necessarily mean it's better!
(Magic Lantern sounds good tho! .. and FWIW there is a small group of hackers working on similar sort of stuff for Nikon cameras)

And what Hayaku says can be important in some ways.

a disadvantage in owning an AF-S focusing only Nikon camera is that you do get slightly restricted with manual only focusing if you don't have AF-S type lenses .. but these are the norm now, not the exception. And in many respects the better lenses to have anyhow. In days gone by when the popular lenses like 50mm's and 35mm's ... etc, in Nikon land, were all non AF-S types.
Given the choice of an AF-D lens vs an AF-S type lens .. I'd take the AF-S lens any day!

Also on the topic of advantages, one advantage of having a non motorised Nikon body over the more elite versions with built in focus motors, is a more complete lens compatibility history.

Way back in about '77 or so, Nikon changed their lens designs a bit, and basically made the older lenses incompatible with newer bodies. But they had a conversion service for those that wanted their older incompatible lenses converted to work with newer cameras(which they had to be to work).
This lens type is known as the non Ai lens. All lenses after this are called Ai or AiS. (the Ai type all work with modern cameras).
The converted non Ai lenses may be called Ai'ed. You see them for sale on various places, all relatively cheap, and many of them ripper lenses .. but full manual stuff.

Because of the design of the non motorised Nikon cameras, they can accept non Ai lenses, where other higher level Nikon cameras (mostly) can't.
So you can mount a non Ai lens onto a D5200 level (or lower) camera without damage to the camera. These non Ai lenses can be found for as little as $10 or $20 on ebay.