I get why this is happening but it still makes me sad. There's really no better experience than being able to look through the viewfinder, track the target and

I get why this is happening but it still makes me sad. There's really no better experience than being able to look through the viewfinder, track the target and have a pretty good idea of the composition (the viewfinder is typically 95-99% of the frame). Any mirrorless system has limitations on low light and latency (of reading the light and then displaying it on a separate screen). This has gotten better but it can never really compete with the sensitivity of a human eye and low latency of passing through a prism (or mirror). The article mentioned compatibility and flange distance but didn't really explain why this is the case. Take the two big 35mm DSLR players of the 20th century Nikon and Canon. Nikon introduced the F mount in 1959 [1]. These were manual focus lenses. Autofocus came much later. Nikon chose compatibility to the point that you can buy a DSLR and a manual focus F mount lens from 1960 and it will work. Canon OTOH had a number of lens mounts (eg FD). When Canon introduced autofocus they bit the bullet and broke backwards compatibility to introduce a new mount, the EF [2] in 1987. Oddly, this situation kind of reminds me of how Java and C# introduced generics, each with a different philosophy. But the point is that Canon learned from its "mistakes" and corrected them with EF and benefitted from it. None of this really explains why DSLRs are dying though. This chart [3] does. Digital cameras in part funded DSLR development and phones killed the digital camera market (~85% drop in sales from the peak). I like digital cameras. Generally speaking picture quality is better, optics are better, framerates are better and the form factor allows things that phones can't do (eg waterproof to 40m, shooting 1080p at ~1000fps, 100x optical zooms). But they're a pain in the ass to use. I think this is a failing of camera manufacturers not to integrate seamlessly with phones. Like why can't I pair a camera with my phone and have photos just transfer to the phone automatically? I end up never using digital cameras because I simply can't be bothered with the steps required to do something with that photo. Phones solve that so much better. Lastly, it's worth pointing out that at this point only two companies produce digital camera sensors at any kind of volume: Canon and Sony. Sony literally produces almost everything else. This volume and market hold gives them economies of scale that no one can compete with. But Sony also makes phone camera sensors so Sony really doesn't lose anything if you buy a camera instead of a phone of vice versa. This probably contributed to manufacturers not caring at the smartphone revolution that literally destroyed that industry. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_F-mount https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_F-mount [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EF_lens_mount https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EF_lens_mount [3]: https://www.statista.com/chart/5782/digital-camera-shipments/ https://www.statista.com/chart/5782/digital-camera-shipments...