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“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”
— Aaron Siskind
— Aaron Siskind
Mirrorless Vs. DSLRs
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For many years, the two most popular types of digital cameras have been compact models and digital SLRs. Each offers advantages over the other.
For many years, the two most popular types of digital cameras have been compact models and digital SLRs. Each offers advantages over the other. Compacts are small (many will actually fit in a pocket), simple and self-contained. DSLRs, on the other hand, typically produce much better image quality (due to their larger image sensors), are much quicker, accept a wide range of interchangeable lenses and have convenient eye-level, through-the-lens optical viewfinders.
Over the last couple of years, a new type of digital camera has arrived on the scene, and quickly gained popularity: the mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera. In fact, in 2011, more mirrorless models were introduced than DSLRs. Mirrorless models combine compact size with DSLR image quality, thanks (in most cases) to putting a DSLR sensor into a compact body.
SPEED
Today's DSLRs start up and wake up from sleep mode very quickly, and there's little lag between the moment you fully depress the shutter button to take a shot and the moment the shot is actually taken. And their phase-detection AF systems are very quick, capable of handling the toughest action subjects (in normal mode; in live-view mode, they use contrast-based AF, which is much slower). This hasn't been the case with the compact digital cameras.
But today's mirrorless models also are very quick. They start up and wake up more like DSLRs than like compact cameras, and their contrast-based AF systems are amazingly quick. In fact, current Panasonic mirrorless models offer "the world's fastest level of Light Speed AF with precise Contrast AF"; new Olympus mirrorless cameras provide "the world's fastest autofocus" (claimed to be faster than a top DSLR's phase-detection system); and Nikon's new 1-series mirrorless models offer a hybrid focal-plane phase-detection/contrast AF system that can work at 10 fps.
WHICH ONE IS FOR YOU?
To determine which is better for you—mirrorless or DSLR—you have to consider your own photography. As far as image quality is concerned, the top mirrorless models can match that of the top APS-C DSLRs. Mirrorless cameras are much smaller and lighter, making them easy to carry for long periods, and easy to use inconspicuously.
DSLRs are better balanced with longer lenses, and better suited for action photography. All DSLRs have convenient eye-level viewfinders, while some mirrorless cameras don't. Mirrorless cameras that do have electronic viewfinders often aren't as good as the finders on midrange DSLR cameras (some feel the EVFs are better than the pentamirror finders of many low-end DSLRs—check this out for yourself before buying either camera type).
The mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras are rapidly gaining market share, and not just among casual photographers, so, obviously, they're just what many photographers are looking for: truly compact cameras that make top-quality images.