In the 23rd October edition of Amateur Photographer, photographer John Bridges ask whether the death of the DSLR was the biggest market misstep of the 21st Century. He gives as his reasons the ergonomics of DSLRs – with a bigger grip and an optical viewfinder.
He notes that with mirrorless cameras you have to think about how long the battery is going to last. And that although they can shoot at astronomically high frames per second, he asks who actually needs that.
Finally, he notes that used DSLRs are cheap as chips now compared to the price of mirrorless cameras.
Bigger grips aren’t really an issue. It depends on the camera. The grip on a Canon R6 is every bit as pleasant to hold as that on a Nikon D750. Batteries are a kind of an issue, mainly because DSLRs just go on and on. But it is not a big deal to carry an extra battery, and keep the one in the camera topped up.
That leaves the optical versus electronic viewfinder question.
In a recent article I wrote about using a DSLR in 2024. I said how I hankered after using one because I missed looking through an OVF (optical viewfinder). An OVF is as near to directly looking at an object as you can get. It means seeing the object you are photographing. That is, light enters the camera through the lens. It is reflected by mirrors and a prism up and into the viewfinder.
The thing is that that when the photographer wants to take a photo, the mirror has to get out of the way. In its rest position the mirror is in the path of the light that needs to reach the sensor. So the mirror housing springs up and then down again. That’s the ‘reflex’ in single lens reflex.
Mirrorless cameras don’t have a prism and mirror arrangement. In the viewfinder the photographer sees a digital representation of the scene,
So now I have scratched the itch to use an OVF, and I am selling on the camera. That leaves a question. How have EVFs improved since they first appeared, and what does the future promise?
The improvements since they first appeared are easy to describe. Lower latency and more dots. Lower latency means that as I move the camera around and look at the scene, the electronic viewfinder keeps up with me smoothly and as though I was looking at the scene with an optical viewfinder. More dots means that scene is clearer, brighter, and more detailed.
I can’t help but think that past a certain point the returns on improvements in ‘more of the same’ will be less easy to get excited about. But how about AI-powered focus and subject tracking?