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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

> Hobbieists might use a Mirror Less instead of a DSLR.

> Pros will still use DSLRs.

I imagine Kodak said something like this in the 90's: "Hobbyists might use digital cameras, but pros will still use film."

Your view is shortsighted. Mirrorless cameras don't beat DSLRs yet, but they're improving fast. Eventually they will be better, and DSLRs will go the way of film: a niche for a few devotees, but not used even by most professionals. The greater reliability afforded by having no moving parts guarantees it.

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To me, everything in photography is a tradeoff.

One application where DSLR provides advantages over mirrorless cameras is photographing moving objects (e.g. sports and wildlife) because optical viewfinders and phase detection autofocus provide a faster response than an electronic viewfinder and contrast detection autofocus. In rapidly changing scenes, the difference between a great shot and 'meh' is often a fraction of a second.

Another area might be the diversity and quantity and quality of available 35mm lenses due to decades of manufacture. There's a lot of existing good glass out in the world. Likewise, film still has a role when resolution really matters because a large format negative has several times the resolving power of even the most advanced medium format digital cameras.

Consumer grade DSLR's are pretty reliable, typically rated to 50,000+ shutter activations (which don't occur when shooting live view or videos). That's more than ten shots a day for more than ten years. Over a period of several years, most people are far more likely to replace their digital camera for the sake upgrades than because the shutter broke and most people are more likely to break their camera by dropping it than by taking too many images.

That's nothing against mirrorless cameras. They have advantages for many people and since a lot of people shoot their DSLR's in program mode without making technical considerations, mirrorless cameras are a reasonable (though not necessarily less costly) alternative.

>> a lot of people shoot their DSLR's in program mode without making technical considerations

Also, a lot of consumer DSLR buyers don't buy much more than a slow superzoom or a kit lens duo (~18-50 + 70-210/300), so they're not truly benefiting from the potential of their purchase beyond the larger sensor.

Kit lenses are often not what limits the quality of images people produce.

Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7ECB90D96DF59DE5

>> Kit lenses are often not what limits the quality of images people produce.

I did not say that though. I only said that they're not benefiting from the potential of their purchase.

Besides, a lot of consumers who buy DSLR kits are doing it on someone's recommendation. They aren't going to bother learning the craft of photography, and once the honeymoon period is over, they're going to get tired of carrying a bulky camera around and their whole purchase will start to collect dust.

My apologies for not understanding your intent.

Exactly. There are still a lot of good reasons to use a DSLR for some applications. But if you're using one with a crappy kit lens on Auto that you never take off, you're carrying a bigger camera than you need.

Even WRT the larger sensor, there are a bunch of much lighter and more compact mirrorless cameras that are either APS-C or micro 4-3rds.

The best mirrorless cameras have phase-detect AF built into the sensors - not yet up there with the best of DSLRs but getting there.

Also you can adapt any 35mm film DSLR lens to almost any mirrorless due to the short flange distance (between back of lens and sensor) so you can still use legacy glass.

I'm mostly a hobby shooter but shoot for/with pros at hockey tournaments.

For any sports shooting, mirrorless is a joke. Why? Because the viewfinder lags the action, you can't time a shot and get the puck going into the goal. Your only option is to shoot burst. Which sucks?

Why does burst suck? Because we're trying to take pictures to sell to the players (or more likely, the parents or SO of the players). We are expected to deliver a folder of "keepers" to the table where they are selling pictures. This is a low margin, very short half life type of deal. It's on us, as photographers, to delete all the non-keepers from the card before handing it over. All while being expected to get a keeper every 8 seconds (the actual pros can do that regularly, I average a keeper every 17 seconds in the last tournament).

My keeper rate is about 60-80%, closer to 80%, when I shoot single shot (I used to play hockey, I can time the shots pretty well). That's when I'm alert, dialed in, just shooting, not messing with the camera. That's with pro gear, used to be Canon 5DIII, now is Canon 1DX II. If I shoot burst, my keeper rate goes down to 2% (1DX bursts at 14 frames per second). It's simply not possible for me to shoot burst, delete all the ones we don't want, and get back to shooting every 8 seconds.

tl;dr: sports photographers disagree (both pro and enthusiast)

DSLR has much, much better battery life. The mirror also offers a degree of protection from dust for your shutter and sensor. There are less electronics that can break. These factors will guarantee DSLR usage by pros for the next 5-10 years at least.

Mirrors rarely (read: never) break through normal usage; the main advantage of mirrorless is not having to accommodate the mirror box which means cameras can be smaller.

None of that has anything to do with being a DSLR though.

Want to increase battery life? Build a bigger battery. Want to protect the sensor? Build a mechanism to cover it when changing lenses.

Is there actually a technical reason you can't make a mirrorless as good as a DSLR?

'Good' is subjective as in 'Good for what?'

There are tradeoffs that a DSLR makes to provide a through the lens optical viewfinder and phase detection autofocus. Mechanical complexity of a moving mirror and the bulk of a pentaprism in addition to the mirror bulk are among them. For some applications and some people the tradeoff is worth it for others it isn't.

If smaller size and lighter weight are more important then a mirrorless is more likely to be better.

Yep. I have both a FF DSLR and a APS-C mirrorless. I use both. I like both. Which I use for a given application depends on what my priorities are.

Bigger battery = The main weight of a DSLR body is already the battery. They can't go the Apple route of filling every possible space in the case with battery either because it needs to be replacacle.

If the reason for getting rid of the mirror is mechanical reliability I don't think it's a good idea to add something else that can break.

There isn't a technical reason, but rather which trade offs do you want to make? You can make a mirrorless camera that has every feature of an DSLR, but there is no point to do that if you lose the advantages of a mirrorless system (small and light).

The battery issue is not that simple. Mirrorless cameras need to keep the sensor active and the LCD or electronic viewfinder on during framing/composition, whereas the DSLR only needs to do this for the 1/60th of a second when the photo is being taken.

bigger battery means more weight. becomes a tradeoff again.

I've had 2 DSLRs, and the first one broke a mount in the mirror in a way that it didn't flip up (automatically) any more. Took 50k images, but it did happen.

The battery on my GH4 lasts so much longer than my wife's Canon 5DMIII.

Can we kill off this "Kodak died because it didn't see digital coming" meme, please?

> I imagine Kodak said something like this in the 90's: "Hobbyists might use digital cameras, but pros will still use film."

It's quite clear they were not saying this in the 90s, because Kodak was selling insanely expensive professional digital cameras for all but one year of that decade.[0]

They were ahead of their competition in adapting to the digital era. They lost because Nikon and Canon ate their lunch with vastly superior digital cameras.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS

I think the big difference is the viewfinder. A viewfinder with 100% coverage gives you the exact picture you are seeing. Its sharp its quick its perfect and doesn't take up energy.

A digital viewfinder gives you the picture the camera gives you. This uses lots of energy and sucks in low light performance.

Where by "sucks" you mean "reveals what the actual picture you're going to get will look like", which on modern sensors is amazingly brighter than what your eyes think they see. EVFs are the future.

They simply don't work for multi-second exposures, however.

Nope. I can underexpose a picture without playing around with the dails and without blurines or similiar things.

Not until they can shoot sports. Go to any big sporting event and you will see a sea of Canon 1DX FF bodies. For the burst fanatics, it will do 14 FPS and refocus and re-evaluate exposure each time. Lock those two and it will do 16 FPS.

I've played with mirrorless, bought one for my kid, I think they are a joke if you are shooting as a pro. I just don't see why I would want one. A phone or a point and shoot will fit in your pocket and they do a great job. If you want better results you step up to full frame. Mirrorless seems like a solution to a non-problem. To me.

Mirrorless cameras still have moving parts, though they don't have the viewfinder mirror.

And they won't displace SLRs until they electronic viewfinders have much higher quality, in several dimensions. I don't doubt that that will happen, but we're a long way from that.

Umm, the first digital SLRs were made by Kodak, using a Kodak designed image sensor.

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