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DSLRs with mirror mechanisms are now officially a technological dead-end. This new camera does things that are not possible with DSLR bodies, including SILENT

• sp332 10y ago
  Don't Canon and Nikon make pretty good mirrorless cameras too?
  • zokier 10y ago
    Not really. Canon mirrorless is ok, I suppose, but very much a "also-ran" and "too little, too late" in the very competitive market. Nikon mirrorless are just not very good (too small sensor for a start..)
    • Matthias247 10y ago
      I have a Nikon 1 and I'm pretty satisfied with it. Key features for me were small package size, low weight and fast shooting (10/20fps with phase-detection autofocus). My use-case is being able to take some decent bike-action pictures with a camera that easily fits in a backpack. For other usecases the offerings from the other brands might be a better fit.
    • hengheng 10y ago
      Canon's EF-m lenses are a fraction of the cost of Sony's. Sony have been pushing price points for a while to make sure they are at the top of the range, just slightly below boutique manufacturers. Meanwhile canon has a lot of experience building to a price point ... Interesting to see they chose to go down that route with their mirrorless system.
  • manarth 10y ago
    Canon have four mirrorless cameras with APS-C sensors (the M10, M6, M5, and M3). Canon don't have a full-frame mirrorless camera. Nikon's mirrorless range is the Nikon 1, with 3 cameras which all have sensors well below APS-C spec. So yes, they both make mirrorless, but neither makes a full-frame mirrorless. [Edit: corrected the reference for the M6, which I initially referred to as having a sub-APS-C sensor. HT to ianburrell for the correction).
    • ianburrell 10y ago
      The EOS M6 has an APS-C sensor. In fact, it has the same sensor as M5.
      • manarth 10y ago
        My apologies, you're quite correct. I must have misread the specs - I'll edit the post to reflect that. Thanks for the correction!
  • gruturo 10y ago
    They came out with pretty gimped and disappointing products (sorry if someone's feeling offended) because they are too afraid of having their DSLR market segment disrupted by a decent mirrorless. It really feels like a half-hearted effort, more to tick the "Mirrorless" checkbox in their product offering than to produce something compelling. I'm not a huge fan of Sony, but I respect quality of this product and the effort they put in it despite having a DLSR line as well.
  • cschmidt 10y ago
    Not really. Olympus, Panasonic, Fuji and Sony have been good in this space. Canon and Nikon have been too afraid of cannibalizing their DSLR's to produce decent mirrorless cameras.
• chongli 10y ago
  I wish cell phone cameras would pick up on-sensor phase detection autofocus. It's the one thing that really holds them back. Contrast detection is just too slow!
  • wklauss 10y ago
    They do. iPhones have used them since iPhone 6 and I think its common among other manufacturers as well in the high-end range of smartphones. But number of AF points it's still small and there are limitations due to the sizes of the sensors.
  • eyesee 10y ago
    That has been available for several years. iPhones 6 and above (for example) include "focus pixels", which is Apple-speak for PDAF. http://www.dailytech.com/iPhone+6s+Focus+Pixels+Are+Already+Used+in+Galaxy+S5/article36587c.htm http://www.dailytech.com/iPhone+6s+Focus+Pixels+Are+Already+...
• petters 10y ago
  When I bought my Sony in 2012, it felt obvious to me that cameras with mirrors are a dead end.
• kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
  Their DSLRs can all function in mirror lock up mode. It's straightforward to delete the viewfinder and have a comparable product.
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    Or keep the viewfinder and have a strictly superior product.
    • wklauss 10y ago
      Also more complex and with more things that can go wrong due to mechanical failure
      • kcorbitt 10y ago
        And heavier, larger and more expensive to manufacture.
      • dragonwriter 10y ago
        Sure, it's more expensive in both initial and operational cost and provides a strict superset of the functionality. This is a fairly common description of what distinguishes higher-end professional products from lower-level and consumer products. Until digital viewfinders on camera are indistinguishable in quality (both accuracy and latency), there will be a qualitative advantage to having a through-the-lens optical viewfinders available (even if there are circumstances where it remains advantageous to disable it), which means SLR with lockup mode is going to beat mirrorless when that matters. Eventually, sure, the viewfinder gap will narrow.
    • _ph_ 10y ago
      The latest generation EVFs are superior in most aspects. For example the new Sony does not have a viewfinder blackout like DSLRs have.
  • sjburt 10y ago
    Sony uses a mirrorless specific format with the lens mount closer to the focal plane than would be possible with a DSLR. This has some nice benefits for the optical design; you're removing a constraint that happens to be particularly painful for image quality. For many decades this was the big advantage of rangefinders such as the Leica M. For Canon or Nikon to do the same it would mean re-releasing their entire line (or duplicating it). Canon kind of doing this with their EOS-M series but they only have a few low-end lenses available. Lenses product cycles are measured in decades, so this is a massive undertaking. Sony was never successful in the DSLR business and they have a much smaller library of lenses so it makes sense that they are abandoning it completely.
• foldr 10y ago
  >This new camera does things that are not possible with DSLR bodies, including SILENT 20FPS shooting, WITHOUT BLACKOUT, WITHOUT DISTORTION FROM ROLLING SHUTTER, and with SHUTTER SPEED UP TO 1/32000 -- very impressive It's impressive, but it's irrelevant to 99% of photography. I'd personally rather have an optical viewfinder than all of those features, impressive as they are.
  • wklauss 10y ago
    Unless you, personally, account for the other 99% of the photography market I wouldn't hand wave this camera that fast. It's a very specialized piece of equipment for a very specific user, sure, but Sony has other bodies suited for different jobs. What the A9 shows is that there are advantages unattainable to mirror systems. As technology matures and cost of entry lowers, the more limited and cumbersome mirror systems will be cast away. Optical viewfinder, albeit nice, won't sustain the whole market for DSLR. The advantage of no having vibration or rolling shutter or silent operation, will eventually drive people to mirrorless systems.
    • foldr 10y ago
      I was commenting on the suggestion that DSLRs are now obsolete. For sure this is a highly capable camera and there are some advantages to going mirrorless. >The advantage of no having vibration or rolling shutter or silent operation, will eventually drive people to mirrorless systems. Vibration is a red herring. Mirror damping for small format DSLRs has been a solved problem for decades. In any case, all of these advantages can be obtained with a DSLR too when it's in mirror lock-up mode.
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      > The advantage of no having vibration or rolling shutter or silent operation, will eventually drive people to mirrorless systems. Those are mostly advantages of shutterless systems (which DSLRs can be and some have been, though sensor quality issues made them niche and actually mitigated some of the advantages; shutterless cameras historically have still had rolling shutter effects, especially at "shutter speeds" higher than those current DSLR mechanical shutters operate at, which is why those shutter speeds are used), except the vibration one is affected by both mirror and shutter (though DSLRs already have mirror lock-in to address the mirror impact.) Also, mirrorless has battery impacts compared to DSLR. So what this says to me is that, if the sensor is really qualitatively good enough to allow this without the problems shutterless cameras have faced before, Sony has a sensor technology lead that will give them a better market position. But assuming everyone else catches up on sensors, DSLRs aren't what is in trouble, its mechanical shutters that are doomed.
• mtw 10y ago
  Now all Sony has to do is design a real ruggerized body to go with it. A Canon 5D mk3 or mk4 can withstand a 6 feet fall (I've been through this several times). A Canon 1DX can be thrown in sand, dust and kicked like a soccer ball and still work. A Sony mirrorless camera won't work after mild rain or slight fall.
• combatentropy 10y ago
  > WITHOUT DISTORTION FROM ROLLING SHUTTER Where do you read this? I see no mention of a global shutter. Rolling shutter is a misleading name. It is an attribute of the sensor, not of any mechanical shutter in front of it. It maybe should have been called rolling read-out. The CMOS image sensor is read out, and reset, line by line --- instead of an image being taken by the whole sensor at once (as in a global-shutter sensor). Therefore the image taken by line 2 is a moment later than the image taken by line 1, and so forth. Global shutter sensors are rare. They don't really cost a lot more, but historically they lose two or more f-stops of exposure latitude and light sensitivity. This is because each photodiode in the sensor is crammed with a bit more circuitry, to store the charge until it is read out, so that a consistent image can be frozen all at once.
• alkonaut 10y ago
  I don't know, - I mean the mirror is bulky and a moving part that can break, but the OVF will be better than EVF in many scenarios. Cameras with a mirror can shoot with an electronic shutter when needed, but will usually need to do so in "live view" on the rear display - i.e. there is no EVF. Cameras without mirror on the other hand can't use an optical viewfinder, but has an EVF. Obviously the shutter and fps features of this particular camera are impressive and beats most DSLrs, but there is nothing inherent about DSLr's vs mirrorless that prevents all cameras of both kinds to pull this off soon. I think the size of mirrorless cameras is a cool feature when you slap on a 35/2.8 on it or similar, so you benefit from the reduced size. Throw on a normal 24-70 zoom lens or similar, and the size difference between a DSLr and a mirrorless is gone.