Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR | Hacker News Reader

Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR

wired.com

21 pointscwan23 comments

Disclaimer: I'm not a real photographer and I don't have any real experience with SLRs, digital or otherwise; I may be completely clueless here.

The concept of a digital SLR has always seemed a bit silly to me. The purpose of an SLR, as I understand it is to show in the viewfinder the same image that will hit the film. The live preview in an electronic viewfinder or LCD screen serves the same purpose, but in theory at least can get closer to the image that will actually be captured. The digital SLR has always seemed like a stepping stone to me; something that would let a film photographer move to digital without having to relearn everything all at once.

What am I missing? I'm sure serious photographers aren't just slow to learn. What's the technological advantage of SLR over EVIL?

I have a good SLR, and looking through an electronic viewfinder is so poor in comparison (even on an expensive pro-sumer model) it's hard to describe. Our visual system can cope with such a huge dynamic range that it makes little sense to neuter this ability while shooting.

An SLR is able to capture RAW data, which can be mapped to different jpeg/whatever images, so there's a big disadvantage in looking at a specific instance through the viewfinder.

In common situations the preview and default jpeg output is absolutely fine, but when you get to more challenging lighting you need to trust your eyes at the time, and the awesomeness of RAW later.

Your first point makes sense to me, and meshes well with what other posters are saying.

As for RAW, I don't see what that has to do with an SLR viewfinder versus digital live preview. A quick google search suggests that all EVIL type cameras support a RAW format.

He's referring to the fact that whenever you display an image on an LCD you're losing an incredible amount of data about the the lighting and color. Data that the CCD actually does collect.

The comment about RAW is saying that your eye, capturing through a mirror viewfinder, is aware of this level of detail. If you view it through the LCD you miss out. This is unimportant if you only use JPG, because that will be neutered similarly to the electronic viewfinder, but if you are shooting RAW then you're looking for something more subtle and need analog control.

Thanks, that's a good explanation. I need to work on my wording.

LCD viewfinders have had some major disadvantages for demanding photographers including:

* low resolution

* low responsiveness

* poor colour and lighting

* drains battery

I've tried some high-end LCD viewfinder cameras a few years back, but none felt as snappy as a DSLR. I haven't tried out any of these EVIL cameras, but I would guess that there have been improvements in these areas in recent years.

Live preview falls short in many ways:

Visual lag: there is always some lag, and blurring if motion is involved with an LCD display. Action shots are just a guessing game.

Loss of resolution: The human eye can resolve detail a lot better than a small display. This is especially important for getting accurate focus.

There are other factors as well.

Re: "Loss of resolution: The human eye can resolve detail a lot better than a small display. This is especially important for getting accurate focus."

I couldn't agree more. This is especially true when shooting in low light with a very wide aperture (2.0 and under), as I am a huge fan of doing. I hate flash. Also, good bokeh is awesome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh

My experience with current LCD screens seems to indicate that they're next to useless in very bright situations, including bright sunny afternoons. I have a Nikon D90, which has a pretty amazing LCD, but on very bright days, I rely more on the histogram to gauge exposure because the LCD display is hard to see in bright light.

As for the rest of the article, I give it a big meh. To quote a truism I read on flickr all the time, "It's not the camera that takes the pictures, it's the photographer". Get out and take pics. If the small form factor of this camera floats your boat, use it! If you want a bigger sensor and a wider lens selection, keep using your dslr.

Is manual focus practical to use on an electronic viewfinder? On my P&S it isn't. The resolution isn't high enough; particularly in low light when the image is fuzzy - and that's just the situation when I need to use manual focus.

Performance and evaluation of the Lumix GF-1, the EVIL pictured in this article.

http://craigmod.com/journal/gf1-fieldtest/

It's not aimed as a gadget review but instead a caring review of the camera across one photographer's grand adventure. The photography and review are both excellent.

"... surprisingly terrible article ..."

And thats from the article comments :)

The article's a mess. The basic point is that most DSLRs, except for the true high-end "full frame" models, have sensors that aren't as big as 35mm film was. So the big 35mm SLR lens is partially wasted, focusing light in areas where there is no sensor.

So there's a new class of high-end cameras that take the same smaller sensor size and pair it with interchangeable lenses. That produced the four-thirds system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Thirds_system). Then if you remove the optical viewfinder and mirror, you get the even smaller micro four-thirds system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Four_Thirds_system).

They're a great system for the "prosumer" or high end amateur photographer. You get essentially the same quality as the lower-end DSLRs with smaller cameras and lenses.

The only downsides are that so far they seem to be more expensive than the low-end DSLRs and I think lots of people just like carrying around a big black camera with their long kit zoom lens on it.

> I think lots of people just like carrying around a big black camera with their long kit zoom lens on it.

You have no idea :) I got my first DSLR back in September of last year, and I've taken it with me to about a dozen holiday dinner meetups and vacation trips to touristy places like the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas since. If I try to use my iPhone or a P&S (as a backup camera), a lot of people end up walking through my picture or can be really rude about giving me a little space to move around and take pictures.

But....when you've got a comparatively huge DSLR (well, my D5000 isn't even huge, but it looks intimidating enough with even the 18-55mm kit lens, let alone my even-bigger-with-hoods 55-200 or 12-24), people around you tend to give you a little space and courtesy to let you take your pictures to your heart's content. I also don't get as many people asking me to take pictures for them, cause they assume big camera must equal pro photographer that should be left alone. Not that I mind doing that for others, but sometimes it's inconvenient.

So I did find it a bit odd the article went out of the way to mention that DSLR's scream "look at me", because that's practically a selling point to a lot of people. :P

But if you're trying to photograph people (street photography, events), they're a lot more relaxed seeing a compact camera than an SLR.

I guess it depends on the situation. That's never been a problem for me, and some of my best photos were of family and friends over Thanksgiving, especially the kids. They were never tense, they were at most curious if they even paid attention to me and the camera.

Not to mention that all the P&S and cameraphone pictures everyone else took were either incredibly noisy, washed out with major red eye because of the built-in flash, or blurred and unacceptable because of inadequate indoor lighting.

Many lenses (Nikon DX; Canon EF-S) do not fill the frame. They are smaller and lighter as well.

What is worse it was like they got paid to advertise a more expensive untested (market wise) product.

Nothing is going to replace a photographers DSLR if they have to pay more and make compromises for minimal benefit like size.

"As a new category, the EVIL is still relatively expensive, and you’ll pay as much for a body and lens as you would for a prosumer level DSLR."

Fashion vs function, I guess.

I don't think it's purely fashion. In some ways the EVIL cameras are more functional. Just by being smaller and lighter they're much easier to carry around with you. As Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

I don't know how practical the advice still is today, but traditionally those doing candid photography preferred equipments that are as less conspicuous as possible, that's why Leica has been so popular among photojournalists.

Henry Cartier Bresson, they guy who pioneered photojournalism, used to wrap black tape around his Leica to make it less distracting to his subjects.

Ah, I was hoping that the link was about the joy of film photography.

Articles like this preclude the idea of style. Different cameras have a different style. I'm quite fond of the hyper-real style that comes with long, low-light exposures with Canon DSLRs. Also, most adapters I've found for using one lens to another tends to lose something to be desired, whether it's the various auto-focusing features built into the lenses, or an f-stop of light, or both.

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