The photography world has been kind of revolutionized in the past couple of years. The standard professional, semi-professional and even beginner DSLR cameras are gradually becoming obsolete.
SLR (single lens reflex) cameras have been around for around 150 years and have been the standard (alongside rangefinder cameras) and there’s a really good reason for that. Through an SLR camera you see exactly what the photo will look like, as there’s two mirrors (or a mirror and a prism) that reflect the light coming in through the lens. The main difference between a rangefinder camera (like the Leica M6 for example) and an SLR (e.g. Nikon F3), is that the rangefinder on the Leica is slightly to the side of the lens so the image is not exact. Also, rangefinders are usually made to work with 50mm lenses or only a limited number of focal lengths. SLR cameras can work perfectly with any lenses that fit the camera mount.
When digital cameras came around there wasn’t much that changed in this aspect. Film was replaced with a digital sensor and the way the viewfinder worked stayed the same. Light is coming in, reflecting and going out of the optical viewfinder for the photographer to compose their shot.
A little later, when camera sensors and processors developed users had the ability to see their image through the camera screen. That meant that they couldn’t only compose their shot exactly, but also expose it. After all the image is already processed by the camera sensor.
This is the point when the ability to have mirrorless digital cameras came. If the camera processor is fast enough to be able to show live view of the image, this means that the optical viewfinder can be electronic. This basically means that instead of mirrors and complicated optics, the camera has a tiny screen. This little screen shows exactly what the shot will look like.
There are a bunch of benefits coming with that. First, as already mentioned, it is way easier to expose a shot correctly. Second, there’s absolutely no difference in focusing speed between using the screen and the EVF (electronic viewfinder) as the image is processed by the sensor. Third, this gives photographers the ability to have a more precise manual focus. The reason this is usually done is through focus peaking and focus check. Focus peaking is the camera highlighting the exact spot that is focused and focus check is basically a zoomed image of it.
Another huge benefit is the ability to have way faster burst rates. In a DSLR camera, there are two things that need to happen before a shot is taken that take time. First, the mirror is lifted up and then the shutter opens and closes. With mirrorless cameras, as there’s no mirror this takes way less time. Modern mirrorless cameras also give the ability to use an electronic shutter which means that there is no need for anything to physically move for a shot to be taken. On top of all that, an electronic shutter means that users can benefit of way higher shutter speeds of up to 1/32 000 or even more.
The absence of a mirror drastically reduces weight as well and the way the sensor is built means its focusing system can have many more focusing points which helps have a much faster AF.
All of this has some disadvantages, of course. The main one is that batteries last significantly less. The lack of an optical viewfinder means that the sensor is constantly working when the camera is on and also that one of the two screens is also constantly on. Another disadvantage when using the electronic shutter is that it can’t work with a flash and fast-moving objects or flickering lights can show up distorted.
The last thing that is probably not relevant for everyone, is that a mirrorless camera is simply more fragile.
Pentax just released a new DSLR camera which will probably be one of the last ones ever done so the world of photography has definitely gone through a revolution in the past few years.
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