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Mirrorless is electrically and mechanially a MUCH MUCH MUCH simpler design (SLR is essentially two cameras in one, with the pentaprism allowing light to go to a
by nakedrobot2 7y ago
Mirrorless is electrically and mechanially a MUCH MUCH MUCH simpler design (SLR is essentially two cameras in one, with the pentaprism allowing light to go to a second sensor used for autofocus, and also to your eye) and it has a lot of compromises in complexity, reliability, and performance.
Mirrorless allows the camera to use the image sensor itself to do all the work. That means autofocus can be much better, using every pixel on the sensor for autofocus. It means you can run computer vision software in real time to do fancy things, like finding out if there are eyes in the image - most likely, you want the eyes to be in focus. You can focus in near darkness, when it's too dark for you to see. And other stuff.
The biggest downsides are 1) the electronic viewfinder, these are not as nice for most people, but with the big caveat that they do allow you to frame an image in near total darkness where an SLR wouldn't allow you to do that and 2) the big one is battery life, it is 5-10X worse with mirrorless than with SLR.
- dsego 7y agoA major upside of the electronic viewfinder is the live depth of field and exposure preview.
- mrob 7y agoAs somebody who wears glasses, the biggest advantage of mirrorless is that you're not forced to hold the camera up to your eye.
- CydeWeys 7y agoDSLRs have live previews on the screens on their back, so that at least you don't need mirrorless for. I like using the viewfinder though, and I like digital ones over optical ones.
- to11mtm 7y agoYeah but until much more recently, using the live preview on a DSLR meant you lost your fast AF.
- KineticLensman 7y agoAs someone who wears glasses, I can use the optical viewfinder on my Nikon D850 without specs but need my glasses to use liveview, e.g. when shooting video. The D850 lets you set the viewfinder close to the prescription of your glasses.