Nikon to stop making SLR cameras and focus on mirrorless models?
asia.nikkei.com
asia.nikkei.com
The primary advantage of the SLR was that you can see the image as the lens is framing the image - a huge improvement over rangefinder systems (such as the Leica M). This allowed the use of super telephoto, wide angle, macro and tilt shift lenses to be much easer. The primary downside of the SLR was that it did not show you how the exposure was going to be recored on the film or digital sensor.
The mirrorless system eliminates that and now lets you see precisely how the image is framed as well as how it is exposed in real time *without* taking the image as the LCD and viewfinder are constantly reading from sensor. In addition you gain the possibility to handhold at much lower shutter speeds due to the mirror slap being removed and the on board sensor shift stabilization systems. DSLRs couldn't do this and relied on lens based solutions (Olympus & Pentax did have sensor shift stabilization, but it was niche and the market leaders Nikon & Canon relied on lens based stabilization). Another advantage is that with the removal of the mirror box, you can have short flange distances allowing new lens designs and lens interoperability. Nikon has the shortest flange distance in the industry and has support for just about every other lens mount out their (though through third party adapters - some with full AF capability also).
So the DSLR, except for maybe a few niche cases is old technology that is superseded in every single way. The interesting thing will be to see how the new mirrorless cameras effect the UI and ergonomics of the camera systems. So far, the pro level systems (Z9, R5, etc..) are all still for the most part using the DSLR form factor. Especially Nikon. I actually like this, but lets see what the future holds.
The closest thing I've found is the Fujifilm X-Pro 3's "hybrid" viewfinder. It has a Leica-style rangefinder that can, with the flip of a switch, convert into a digital image like every other mirrorless. It can even overlay the frame and a digital focus preview onto the analog image in the rangefinder as you move it around. It's not useful for concerts - the 23.5x15.6mm sensor is too small - but I photographed some of the the 2020 protests in NYC and the extra field of view in the rangefinder is actually an advantage in that kind of hectic environment.
I cannot agree more about low light photography.
The problem with EVF design common to all current mirrorless is the autofocus needs more exposure to work in low light. This refutes just one of the OP's marketing claims which I disagree with Thom Hogan isn't the under sold story because of poor marketing (Nikon is selling their flagship to, to quote Thom *[sic] "users who buy my 1200 pages guidebook to use their "automatically everything" wonder and don't even know how to download and open the PDF" my view is that the Japanese manufacturers are being sensitive to over promising during this extremely painful transition. Having a six figures toolkit (not atypical sports pro investment just buy a couple of super telephotos and the accompanying bits) made obsolete and second class over night naturally offends American and most western sensibilities.
Edit: spelling of EVF first line; can be instead of are first sentence; about not able para2; under sold story for story told para3
Things have definitely improved from the Fuji X-Pro 3 if you want fast-paced action with a mirrorless camera.
Let me drop some facts. Your own reaction time, if you actually expect some specific event to happen, is 200ms+ between the actual event, seeing the event and eventually pressing a button. Add to that the delay for the camera to go through all the motions of taking the picture (i.e. delay between shutter button press and picture being recorded). EVFs are fast enough for quite some time (= many years) to not add substantial amounts of time on top of that, also because to catch the right moment you had to press the button before the moment even with OVFs already.
Next thing: How is it possible to do manual focusing in dark environments? The Sony A7s is pretty much a nightvision camera, you can see stuff in seemingly normal light through the EVF while you have problems seeing anything at all with your eyes. Also means this wouldn't even be remotely possible using an OVF. Now why do I use manual lenses? The crappy AF, clearly.
However, that problem got solved with the introduction of the Sony A9, which I consider (at least!) on par with my 5D3, and I first tested the A9 at a concert. Things have only gotten better since then.
And yes, the lower category and older models which fit tighter budgets are maybe not checking the AF mark, but this applies all the same to DSLRs where only the pro level consumer and high end models really fit the bill as well.
Zero latency problem, really. Go for it, you'll love it! It's a game changer.
I would take a pentaprism SLR over an EVF any day. That being said, my budget has usually been constrained to penta-mirror SLRs.
I'm also not splurging a huge budget: the OM System OM-1 is available for half the price of the equivalent DSLR from Canon.
I mean it, mirrorless is fine.
For low latency maybe it's now feasible to use a 30fps or 60fps motor drive (aka video camera) all the time? And I thought AF systems now work well enough that MF is just for use with old lenses with no AF.
As for Sony cameras… at least the A7rIII we used to have.. the latency was terrible and really impeded the creative process.
Things have definitely improved from the Fuji X-Pro 3 if you want fast-paced action with a mirrorless camear.
This is a one-sided comment, as you describe the advantages of mirrorless but don't discuss the significant disadvantages.
With mirrorless you don't see through the optical lens, you're always looking at an LCD even on the viewfinder. This is not a good thing, it means the camera is always consuming battery. With a DSLR battry life is measured in months (I go on vacations and don't even bother bringing a charger) since the camera doesn't need to consume any power most of the time.
But yes, that is probably the biggest advantage the DSLR has left.
I too was very anti EVF until I used one last year. In the end, the visual performance fears didn’t show up, the battery life can be dealt with, and the benefits of the Canon R5 were just too much.
That's more than a bit optimistic. With things like lenses with IS, etc., it's quite easy to use a battery a day with a DSLR. My 5D4 would run down the charge on two batteries on heavy use days (like weddings, to be sure) but a full day walking around SF would need a charger.
Being the photo geek in my circles, I occasionally get asked to be an event photographer for some activities. In those days I'll take on the order of a thousand photos in a day, and that doesn't come close to using up a battery.
Battery life on DSLRs is almost miraculous, I love it.
Are you a heavy user of the screen? I mostly don't use it, I do everything through the viewfinder. I only shoot RAW.
The SLR is a great alternative to a rangefinder.
But not necessarily an improvement because rangefinders often show what is outside the image frame, the view through the finder can be close to f1 without weight or bulk, and the absence of a mirror tends to make cameras quieter.
To be fair I always thought of SLR’s as the pinnacle in accord with decades of marketing.
Until I bought my first rangefinder, an Olympus 35RC which is not all that much much bigger than a pack of cigarettes.
I still like SLR’s as an alternative experience to rangefinders (and zone focus viewfinder cameras and view cameras, and TLR cameras).
And just to make a pedanticism, view cameras also let the photographer compose through the taking lens…without a pentaprism in the way.
But my current DSLR (Nikon D50) is around 15 years old so I'll just grab another late model and it'll do me for decades :)
Perhaps...but this statement sounds awfully weaselly to me, i.e. 'we don't currently have any plans for layoffs' pronouncements that corporations often make right before announcing layoffs.
Nikon has a pretty long history (in Western memory going back to the Nikon S) of executing well and consistently. They're often not the first mover: Nikon S was a "best of" Zeiss-Leica body (pretty much all Zeiss, but using the Leitz shutter - this is why Nikon lenses mount, focus and zoom to the left), became quite popular. Nikon F wasn't the first SLR system, either, but well executed and became the benchmark.
The electronic shutter in a rolling shutter CMOS is very similar: The first curtain is where rows of pixels are reset, the second curtain is when they are sampled/read out and digitized. For normal camera sensors this takes between 1/20s and 1/60s, depending on the resolution - high resolution cameras take longer.
The limiting factor for that isn't actually the pixel array itself, but the speed at which data can be transferred off the sensor. This is where stacked sensors come in: you can move data way more quickly between the front sensor die and the back logic/storage die than you can move it off chip. So the trick of the fast stacked sensors is that they read the image from the sensor die into the memory die, and then transfer the image through the usual, much slower link to the image DSP. But at that point the image has been fully exposed and the slowness of the link doesn't matter, except for the maximum frames per second.
This way you can make an image ~50 MP sensor whose electronic "shutter curtains" travel at a similar speed as the shutter curtains of a mechanical fp-shutter and so you don't reeallly need the mechanical shutter any more, because the motion artifacts will be basically the same. There are some edge cases, e.g. high frequency flickering light sources can apparently create issues, but they don't seem to be a show-stopper.
(There are some additional tricks, like CMOS sensors have been column-parallel for a long time, where each column of pixels have their own PGA and ADC, but these newer sensors seem to sample multiple rows in parallel as well)
((There are also global-shutter CMOS sensors, which can "near simultaneously" sample all pixels in the array, in the analog domain, but since this requires extra transistors in each pixel, it's always detrimental to other parameters for a ceteris paribus rolling shutter sensor. These are used mostly for machine vision / slow motion purposes. Higher-spec global shutter sensors are export controlled.))
The only other camera from the big 3 flagships that matches this speed is the Sony A1 with 1/250s. The Canon R3 is 1/180s. It has a mechanical shutter, but I think the Z9 proves that its worth the omission in 99% of the shooting scenarios. Especially when it is coming in $1000 cheaper than the Sony.
Edit: I was beaten to it!
A mirrorless system does not create better pictures. It does increase the likelihood that you capture the image you want at all.
Sure there is. For example consider the problems involved in taking a high resolution picture for a fast moving but difficult to focus object in low light. A Z9 will do brilliantly but cheaper cameras -- not so much.
A camera is not just the image sensor, modern sensors are all fairly close technologically in the grand scheme of things.
Notice how they didn't mention continuation of "DEVELOPMENT"!
Good news so for people buying used, like myself!
https://petapixel.com/2020/10/06/nikon-has-finally-discontin...
The OP says "Nikkei has learned", so presumably they have some source telling them this and how true it is depends on how reliable the source is.
One of the things I love most is seeing exposure in real time, it's a nice little quality of life thing you don't think about until you experience it. Over the years I think anyone who takes photography seriously has gotten pretty good at gauging exposure, but to actually see it change in real time when you adjust ISO or Aperture is pretty slick.
But all of that being said, I'll hold onto my DSLRs forever too- as one person pointed out the battery life is far better and when you're out for 10 hours at a time that really matters.
I shoot everything JPEG, usually 16:9, immediately download to phone, and basically delete the raw as soon as the edits are done in Snapseed or VN. Photography in the age of social media is highly ephemeral. It's there for a day and then people are onto the next story or snap dopamine hit. I prefer a form of photography that is more like blitz chess, which is to see how quickly you can snap something good and create/post a decent edit.
Different take here.
I do show some photos to family / friends and keep web album for that. But mostly I photograph for my own viewing on large 4K screen. Photos from smartphones just do not cut it for me so I stick to mirrorless. The fact that most are happy with smartphone is irrelevant to me. It is my hobby and as long as I am happy the rest does not matter.
EVF is much more convenient for near vision glasses wearers too.
That said, I think you need an R5/R6 generation body to not be annoyed by mirrorless readout slowness and VF lag.
I have a very high res (mirrored) medium format system and keeping the “focus trim” set correctly to align the AF system with sensor seems impossible, seemingly changing with temperature or other conditions.
Focus also shifts with aperture, it's impossible to have an open loop system that works accurately. Some lenses will front focus wide open, be spot on at f4 and back focus after that, or the opposite. Or be spot on wide open and oof when you stop down.
How so? I use diopter adapters in my DSLR eyepieces, since the built-in adjustment doesn't suffice and I hate to shoot through glasses that prevent me seeing all of the viewfinder.
I wouldn't have thought an EVF could natively improve on this, but now you've got me intrigued.
In the end I ended uo using, and loving, my dad's D700 I switched the D200 for (he's on a D750/200 combo now). I came to the conlusion that, regardless how good Nikon's Z cameras and lebses are, I prefer to spend the money on vacation and trips to places to shoot great pictures. So I am going to stick with the D700, with a mint, used D300 as a back-up. Some additional budget will go into a 400mm and a 20mm lense. And maybe a spare D700 body as long as those are still available with <50k shots taken. Honestly, this camera gave me the fun in ohotography back, I love using it. For my use as an artistic tool it the perfect camera.
As a pro so I would go mirroless, no doubt about that.
The one issue I see, so, is cropping. I am not talking about cutting some sides or going to portrait format, but rather cropping out e.g. birds. That's the only time the 12 MP hinder you. In a sense a D700 forces you to shoot better pictures.
Overall, if you can, get one. There are some from places like mpb.com with below 50k shutter count in very good condition for around / less than 400 Euro. You cannot do anything wrong.
Oh, a D700 doesn't do video. No problem for me, but if you want to do video that is a missing feature.
I stocked up on all the film cameras I couldn’t afford as a kid when the sell off happened about ten years ago. I imagine DSLRs will have a burst of retro popularity at some point once people get bored of whatever it is they’re using.
Have you tried the eye tracking auto focus on the R5? It's actually pretty phenomenal and can help a lot when photographing wildlife. Funny story though, if you're photographing animals with white butts and black tails (like a bighorn sheep) from behind..it's gonna track the butt as if it were a face. That made me laugh when it happened.
I knew the 5D4 would be the end of the line, and I ditched my 1DX which was just too heavy, the 4 is better in every way. I had the original 5D and the mk2, and very impressed at how refined the 4 is.
I did try the R5 and I also used the original eye-tracking Canon EOS 5 back in the 90s so I can see things have come a long way :) The deal-breakers on the R5 were:
1) Huge cost 2) Lack of GPS 3) New lenses required
And the extra value of quality and video and speed weren’t enough to compensate. On those points, I also think there’s a bunch of trade-offs.
Firstly, the file sizes. My first digital camera, the Nikon D1X, had file sizes of 5-6 Meg, and my Q2 is coming in at 85 Meg. That’s 17 times as much drive space needed to deal with this, not to mention network bandwidth to move everything around. Do I need this many pixels? Well obviously I want them, but I just sent out a 49 x 30 inch print to a client that was upsized in Topaz and was taken on the 21MP 5D2. Was it stunning? Definitely.
Secondly, the lenses. They are ridiculously good these days, as they need to be to resolve for 60+MP sensors coming up. But they are also getting pricy and heavy. Do I really want to replace an entire bag of primes? I save 100 grams on the camera to lose it all tenfold on the lenses. This was always the biggest cost involved with a system. The R5 is hardly cheap but I’d honestly rather switch to Leica S at this point.
Thirdly, at these pricing levels, we really are in Leica territory and the Q2 absolutely trounces Canon in terms of value and workflow. I’ve been running the Q2 for three years and it’s got 51 real MP to play with, a lens that makes you laugh with its ability, plus speed and control. It’s completely outgunned if we’re talking wildlife photography and long lenses, but on everything else it is camera number 1.
DSLRs aren’t being truly killed by their mirrorless replacements, not yet maybe, but by anyone who can shoehorn smartphone tech into a real camera.
Maybe interchangeable lenses are the things getting in our way?
Aren't you better off carrying spare batteries than a whole extra camera?
https://www.dpreview.com/products/fujifilm/compacts/fujifilm...
It's great. It even takes AA batteries so no hassle with some specific pack & charger.
https://www.nikon.co.jp/news/2022/0712_01.htm
Nikon denies the report:
> Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of digital SLR
That's not really a denial though, just a statement that they haven't announced anything.
> As well as the rise of mirrorless tech, SLR cameras have also been out-competed by smartphone technology, which has shrunk the camera market over decades.
The market has shrunk but it's nothing to do with smartphone cameras, it's like saying McDonalds have shrunk the market for three stars restaurants. Not the same audience at all, not the same use, you'll find that the DSLR market has been mostly stagnating innovation wise for a while, making it hard to justify buying a new model for just a few more megapixels every now and then. A 10 years old DSLR is still a formidable image-maker.
A large percentage of those people have realised they can take really good photos with their phone now, good enough that they don't feel inadequate, and maybe they don't feel like carrying around heavy equipment either.
That market is gone and will never return.
Now one could argue about whether the tiny censors on smartphones in of itself is just another dimension of artistic expression.
But my personal aesthetic preference as a hobbyist photographer and art consumer is that unintentional censor noise is not good.
So I dug out the old DSLR and brought (lugged?) it with me on a recent vacation to Peru. I threw in the largest SD card it would accommodate (32GB), which gave me literally thousands of photos at the highest quality JPEG setting (don't really want to deal with post-processing RAW images). The only lens I brought was a 35mm 1.8 DX lens.
I have to say that the quality of my photos was much better than I had seen in quite some time. It is hands down better than my smartphone. Even though they are both ostensibly 12MP, the larger sensor and lens make a big difference. The two things I missed from my iPhone were super wide angle shots and low light. Since I had my iPhone with me, I could just pull that out if needed.
I briefly thought about buying a new DSLR or a mirrorless, but really my old one is good enough. I will probably just buy an 18-55 zoom or something for my next vacation.
And tons of people who want to have a youtube channel. Hell there are lots of people that use a SLR just for their zoom calls.
As a hobbyist photographer myself I can confirm that I spend serious amount of money on equipment that is pro-level. The last camera I got was the Nikon Z6 Mark II, which is an entry-level pro camera. Why? Because "The picture quality matters" and it feels good to have a really nice camera when you're standing around a bunch of other hobbyists who all have pro cameras.
For the most part the people who take photos with their phones were never really buying DSLRs. They were buying all the other digital cameras. When you go for a DSLR you're wanting to control everything, shutter speed, the aperture, etc. You want to be able to go wide-lens, tele-lens, you want to be able to choose between 2000/second and 100/second. You want to do time delay.
If you're even half interested in taking good photos you're looking to get a DSLR even if you don't understand everything. You can look at the photography sites for hobbyists such as youpic.com and 500px.com. These sites are full of people sharing their hobby photos and you'll find 1-2 out of hundreds using their mobile.
That's the crap webcam problem. You'll never use the mirror mechanism in a DSLR in that situation.
Nikon promotes using their DSLRs as webcams.[1] What you really want, of course, is the good optics, sensor, and electronics without the viewfinder, mirror, battery, and manual controls, and with good connectors and no overheating during continuous operation.
Neither the webcam makers nor the traditional camera makers have addressed this market. So who's doing it? Hikvision, the surveillance camera makers.[2] Their thing is making high-rez cameras that handle widely varied lighting conditions. So they offer some of those packaged as webcams.
[1] https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/webcam-utility...
[2] https://www.hikvision.com/en/products/Turbo-HD-Products/Turb...
Although We’re probably saying the same thing, just differing on our definition of hobbyist.
Perhaps 20% of pictures I've shot have been on a DSLR, and 80% on phones. By sheer numbers, a really big share of the best shots are from a phone camera. And there's a lot of things that I took pictures of, that there's some rather obvious phone camera penalties from... but at least I have a picture while with a DSLR I would likely not.
It's freeing, too, to not have to choose between "do I lug the big camera today in difficult conditions or get no photos today?"
... I am looking forward to picking up a mirrorless to reduce the barrier a little bit of carrying "the big camera".
The phone pics have the benefit of some pretty good automatic processing, ease of use (the thing is already in my pocket), and for typical landscape or portrait stuff, they are just fine.
But there really is no comparison when it comes to "real" bokeh/shallow DOF stuff, not to mention the sheer flexibility offered by a full-fat lens, bigger sensor, and controls that don't have me poking around in touch screen menus. I could even swap to my 35mm f/1.8 if I wanted to shoot in lower light than my phone can do without digital tricks or longer exposure times.
If I were in the market today, perhaps I would go for a mirrorless camera, but as someone decidedly not professional at all WRT photography, I still enjoy having something flexible in addition to using my phone as a decent backup point-and-shoot camera.
That does not make any sense, it was already the case that you could make excellent pictures with compact cameras 15 years ago, without having a DLSR. If your hypothesis was right the DSLR market would have disappeared much earlier.
Your argument only holds up if you're taking high aperture landscape photos in broad daylight...
Now, a pretty excellent compact camera is in pretty much everyone's hands. So the question becomes-- is it worth another camera to be serious? Would I even carry it anywhere?
On the other hand they were revolutionary compared to film cameras, so it didn't really matter.
That customer base has pretty much disappeared and it has everything to do with smartphones. If I recall the statistic correctly, the DSLR market shrunk by 40% across the board in just a few years because of this.
Due to this, Nikon and others have re-positioned their market to high price/margin prosumer/pro gear mostly.
Mirrorless has several advantages: no more mismatch between the focus sensor and the CMOS sensor, no more mirror lag, viewable area matches CMOS sensor area perfectly, electronic viewfinder can show the image as it would be after exposure (making over/underexposed areas easy to spot while composing the shot), and most importantly it allows for much more compact lens designs because the last optical element can be much closer to the sensor since there is no mirror in the way.
Viewfinder lag has not been an issue anymore since 10 years ago. And with recent CMOS sensors having phase-diversity elements, autofocus can be as fast as with DLSRs.
I got the opposite kind of lens, one at the upper end of what you can wrangle in your hands. If your lens is big you have a heavy pack, look like a dork, can't hold it steady, all that. There is a lot to say for a camera that is easy to handle.
To take your SEL35F18F as an example, the lens weighs 280g. The Nikon DSLR equivalent, "AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G ED", weighs 300g.
To go to extremes, Sony's SEL600F40GM weighs 3kg and so does Canon's "EF 600mm f/4L IS III USM" (admittedly, Nikon's equivalent weighs 4kg).
I'm not saying this to prove you "wrong" or anything, a Sony A7RIV weighs 665g to a Nikon D850's 1kg or a Canon 1DX Mk3's 1.4kg but switching to Sony might just be the difference between a 5kg kit and a 4.7kg kit: it's still pretty heavy.
I'm just pointing this out because when I was starting out I heard a lot of people talking about how small and light mirrorless cameras were. I think at the time this idea was focused more on cameras like the Olympus OM-D series. Amateurs/enthusiasts (including myself, who owned an OM-D) often didn't realise that one of the major reasons an OM-D kit was much lighter than a DSLR kit was that it was optically less capable due to the differences in sensor size. A big part of the reason an 17mm f1.8 MFT lens is so small is that it isn't equivalent to a full-frame 35mm f1.8 the way many people thought it was. It's more accurately equivalent to a 35mm f3.5 which could be made similarly light for the larger sensor, if anybody wanted that (but few people want that).
What they didn't point out is that those bigger heavier lenses are bigger and heavier because they are more recent, and the camera sensors are so detailed that the cameras need fantastically sharp lenses, which means that they are bigger. Also, people's expectations of the quality of lenses has increased. So, they could make some small light lenses, but then someone would pixel peep and complain about how blurry they are, when in actual fact they would be just as sharp as the old DSLR lenses, but the cameras are more able to reveal their shortcomings.
The accurate autofocus is nice but I would rather have an older flagship DSLR than any modern mirrorless camera. The only exception I might make is for a more recent Leica M camera, but that's only because I've sold one and would like to use those nice tiny little lenses again.
But are these lenses and bodies actually designed that way, or do they keep the old dimensions because of backward compatibility?
Battery life is much worse but when you go all in on next gen Mirrorless cameras there are gains that are just impossible otherwise in a DSLR. The thing that convinced me was using an A7RII 5 years ago in NYC at night. The simple fact of the matter was that the camera could focus and validate setup in the dark better than my own eye with my personal Canon DSLR, even with the wide open nifty 50. I think we are on the edge of major innovations in camera tech. The size advantage makes it easier to carry more batteries as well.
Really the biggest thing is that Nikon is just brutally behind in tech compared to Sony and even Canon. The market has moved past DSLRs. Sony showed up and showed how to do it and that was it.
I don't see how that is true in the slightest. The Z9 is a true flagship that stacks up well against the competition. Cameras lower down on the segment stack can also hold their own, albeit some would argue the autofocus is lacking. Autofocus is just one piece of the tech in a camera.
A lot? This must mean you get your info from Youtube grifters. Every serious reviewer has praised the Z9 for having world class auto focus capabilities that defy belief. People are panning tiny birds in flights and it just keeps hitting it.
The only criticism is that Sony has a tiny notch up in very specific situations, yet that gap is rapidly shrinking. We're talking really marginal differences here.
The annoying thing is that Sony simply cannot do software. I love my A7S2, the hardware is excellent even years past its release, but the menus are confusing as fuck, why does it even ship with WiFi with the option to connect it to an existing network when their own software can't detect it there, or why does it need yet another piece of proprietary software to be used as a webcam instead of just implementing USB UVC...
For a mirrorless camera the sensor and screen are on when you are setting up.
The flip side is that a mirrorless camera makes a great video camera with some caveats. For instance if you want to do a shot that smoothly zooms in or out you have a rocker control on a real video camera that you can hold steadily and it does just that. I can't do the same with a mirrorless lens because I can't turn the zoom ring on a lens very smoothly.
Furthermore, why are you unable to hold a mirrorless camera as steadily? Something like the Peak Design Clutch strap ought to remedy that I would think? Not to mention cameras like the X-T4 have quite good IBIS built-in to steady out the shot a bit.
Nobody is forced to make a sacrifice they don't want to. This is a complete win/win for the consumer.
This is assuming that you're taking pictures for a living.
(The smaller M43 lenses are a big part of why I use it, though, as I am a video-first shooter and Panasonic's video-friendly, silent-motor lenses are pretty ridiculous.)
And even when people are shooting with full-frame lenses (e.g. on Sony), they often use an APS-C camera body because it has more pixels in the very middle of the captured image, with the assumption being that you're going to be doing a lot of digital cropping anyway to get more effective zoom.
Plus I keep backups just in case my camera bag is stolen, and first party Nikon batteries are $70 per. I hadn't considered keeping a battery bank and a long USB-C cable as a backup though, so I'll need to look into that.
That said, it seems like irrational nostalgia (which is perfectly understandable) is the only reason to prefer SLRs over mirrorless cameras at this point. The comparative disadvantages of mirrorless cameras were mostly temporary and rooted in the fact that SLRs had been around much longer. Now that the lens selection and technology has caught up, SLRs are strictly worse in every way.
Am I missing something or are there any durable advantages to resisting the seemingly inevitable march towards mirrorless?
But it’s mechanically complex , expensive to produce and more than needed now. Especially if you can autofocus on sensor now. These new cameras should be cheaper to produce…but demand must be much lower.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_single-lens_r...
It’s amazing how good we get at designing:making things, then in a few years they go obsolete (my film camera T90 canon for example). I feel gas powered cars are going that way too, a bit more slowly.
First mass produced digital SLR was by Nikon in 1988[0]. So this would represent roughly 34 years to fully replace the product line with digital cameras.
First mass produced electric car would be either Tesla Model S (2012)[1] or their Roadster (2009)[2]. I'm not sure if 147 Roadster's count as mass production. So if gas cars are being fully dropped by 2043 or 2046 then it'd be on the same scale as the digital camera.
Feature phones being dropped in favor of smart phones was pretty quick. I'm not sure when major manufacturers stopped feature phone production, Nokia 3310 had a revival in 2017. So more than 10 years, but probably less than 15.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camera#cite_note-busch...
It's important to understand the history of SLRs. When they were invented, they were competing against rangefinders. With a rangefinder, you have a lens that exposes directly onto the film. Then you have a separate little viewing window that you look through to aim and compose your shot. That little eyepiece is off center from the actual lens and film, so what you see looking through it isn't exactly what the lens will see when you take the shot. Also, you can't preview things like the aperture, depth of field, and focus.
SLRs were a radical improvement over that. With an SLR, there's a little mirror/pentaprism thing between the lens and film. When the shutter is closed, it routes light up from the lens to the eyepiece. Then when you press the shutter button, the mirror flips out of the way (this is part of the iconic "take a photo" sound) and the light going through the lens goes straight onto the film.
In this way, what you see in the eyepiece is exactly what the lens sees. The whole point of an SLR is to make previewing a photo before taking a shot match the actual taken shot.
Digital SLRs have the exact same structure, but with a digital sensor instead of film. When you look through the eyepiece, you are looking through the pentaprism and mirror and then out the lens. So you see exactly what the lens sees, and what the sensor will see when the shutter opens. But the framing tends to not be exactly the same since the sensor may crop in various ways that the eyepiece doesn't.
Also, the eyepiece doesn't show you anything that the sensor is doing to the photo, like exposure control, ISO, noise, motion blur, etc.
If your goal—which was the original goal of SLRs!—is to make your eyepiece match the final photo, the best way to do it is to have the eyepiece be a digital display that shows what the sensor itself sees. That is as close to the ground truth as you can possibly get.
This is what mirrorless cameras do. Not only are they superior when it comes to previewing accuracy, they are lighter, smaller, simpler, and more durable because they don't need the large moving parts for the pentaprism and mirror.
I loved my SLRs over the years, but its time has passed.
I shot on film in high school. I had a decent job so I could buy enough film and processing that I didn't worry too much about "wasting" shots.
I used various point-and-shoots in the late 90s and early 2000's. I constantly had "battery anxiety". I missed a lot of good shots because I kept the camera powered-off for fear of draining the battery. When I threw caution to the wind and kept the camera on the battery would inevitably die and I'd miss shots. I was constantly thinking about my battery. It sapped a lot of the joy from shooting pictures.
I never worry about that with my Nikon DSLRs. I can grab the camera when I head out in the morning and know I can shoot as much as I want, all day, and never run out of battery. (Realistically a big shooting day for me is only 400-500 shots. Still...)
Given how long my D30, D3100, and now D7200 have lasted I guess I can find some inventory blowout on a couple newer cameras and hoard them away.
I have a nice selection of lenses, I don't want to give them up or use adapters.
Even on my m10 monochrom, which has a very poor battery life, I never reached for the spare in normal usage.
As much as I love my Nikon DSLR, MILC has surpassed it as a technological possibilities. They needed to pour all of their available resources into MILC 4 years ago.
The Z9 was a big release for Nikon, proving they could rival Sony's dominance and match the performance of the D6.
The Z6/7 releases were great proof of concepts but not competitive cameras, at least not in a ring with Sony and Canon. And now that we know they can, they need to put it all on the line as their market share just keeps declining.
Of course you can argue for social media it doesn't matter. But that's another point. And for things such as YouTube it's incredibly noticeable when a video is properly filmed vs using a phone (see Mkbhd "secret" iPhone recorded videos)
It's amazing what it can do with such a small lens and sensor, but doesn't stack up well to pro gear really, or even all but the worst prosumer gear.
It mostly doesn't matter, I suspect. After all the best camera is the one you have with you, and phones are always there...
Most professionals have moved on though, for sure. It is going to be interesting to see how things continue to develop.
The single memory card slot of the first generation was also ridiculous for the wedding photographer crowd in that it made them completely unusable.
They were slow to make the jump to mirrorless but that's due to their giant legacy customer base, which Sony lacks. And in a way, Nikon never really is fast in releasing things.
Only now is the Z system really coming together and it's quite fabulous, worth the wait. The lenses are top notch, their second generation bodies very competitive and the Z9 an absolute beast. Further, they are aggressively pricing new releases, undercutting the competition.
So the true adoption for the Z system is still to come, whilst they're already doing quite well given the late entry.
They're not going to be market leaders anytime soon, maybe never, but they're not dying, far from it. Note that they also sit on a lot of cash and are part of a far larger corporation.
My usage has changed. 10 years ago I was happy with the e-m5 as it was lightweight. Now my phone is great lightweight camera, I need something once a month for special shots, so might as well get something bigger.
I think my main point is that once a camera company starts losing market share its very difficult to attract new users.
Edit: OK, I should say inferior quality w.r.t noise when all other features are similar.
Certainly, it's not anything specific about mirrorless that makes it noisy. It's just that if I have a DSLR with certain features, and another mirrorless with similar features (and noise profile), the latter tends to cost more.
And my information may be a bit dated - the last time I checked was in 2018. And I only buy APS-C, which usually was quite a bit more expensive for mirrorless, with not better quality.
It basically seems to come down to the fact that with DSLR you can disable Live View, therefore keeping the sensor cool until you take your exposure.
I expect then that a camera like the X100V or X-Pro3 - both of which are mirrorless cameras that also have an OVF - would have the same advantage as a DSLR.
That'd only be true if the sensor is a significant heat source that's unable to dissipate that heat adequately. Which... I can't think of any reason that would be inherently true. The ISP generates some decent heat, which is why many cameras have limits on how long you can record 4k video. But does the cmos sensor? Especially when you're talking full-frame, the energy density seems like it'd be pretty tame. If it's not meaningfully rising above ambient temperature, then there's no reason a DSL sensor would be cooler & therefore less noisy.
a) You use a smaller sensor (while this is the norm, mirrorless does not absolutely imply APS-C vs Full Frame)
b) You use smaller lenses (same disclaimer as above)
and, above all else, by far
c) You deliberately cripple your mirrorless line because you're too afraid to cannibalize your SLR business, praying really hard that everyone else is doing the same
c) Possibly true.
My point isn't that fundamentally mirrorless has more noise. It's that for the same price mirrorless cameras tend to be inferior in this regard.
For context, my DSLR is APS-C and not full frame. The last time I looked (2018), I couldn't find a mirrorless camera that performed as well noise wise than my Nikon for the same price (and other features).
I sold all my F mount lenses last year finally. Despite owning a Z50 and a Z6 I only seem to use the Z50 and the DX kit lenses. Might sell the full frame stuff apart from the 35mm prime which is amazing on the Z50.
The combo of my 5D4, and latest iphone pro seem to have me covered.
I'm tempted to rent a latest canon mirrorless body, but I can't see how Canon can keep up with IQ innovation through processing the way Google and Apple have.
Edit: Nikkei is also reporting on this, so that makes it more believable.
For people people you get eye-autofocus and eye-tracking (better DSLRs have done people and face tracking for ages, but one of the more en-vogue styles in people photography of the last couple years is ultra-large apertures with sharp eyes, and with DSLRs that's really pushing it, especially at 50 MP).
For media people you tend to get better video support. The latest flagships (e.g. 8K capabilities of the Z9) start to infringe on cinema camera territory (though with none of the connectivity, which would add an unacceptable amount of bulk to a photo/hybrid camera).
For sports people you get more images per image and no blackout at all (Z9 only, for now).
For wildlife people you get quiet operation (no mirror, no shutter necessary, depending on the model).
In terms of the image quality itself, the hypothetical spherical cow in a vacuum, there's no advantage per se, various DSLRs and mirrorless cameras use practically identical sensors. Tiny mark against mirrorless for PDAF pixels, but that's not a practical concern for any current camera. Shutter-less mirrorless avoid a possible source of IR contamination (the optical barrier used by the camera to time the shutter), but that's about it. Oh, and IBIS, obviously.
> For landscape people you get far better wide-angle lenses
What specifically? Just comparing Nikon mirrorless to Nikon DSLRs, the F-mount (for DSLRs) has, for example, the highly regarded 14-24mm f/2.8. What's the mirrorless equivalent to that?
> For sports people you get more images per image
I assume you mean more images per second? That much is true (eg 14fps for the D6 vs 30fps for the Z9 at full res).
> ... no blackout at all (Z9 only, for now).
This is... partially true. There is an inherent blackout in SLRs but that may or may not matter. Assume you're shooting at 1/500 shutter speed and you're continuous shooting on a Z9 you're going to get some inherent blackout because you won't be shooting 500fps (because you can't).
But here's the big thing with DSLRs over mirrorless: input lag for target tracking. An optical viewfinder ("OVF") is just inherently faster than any electronic viewfinder ("EVF"). For a lot of people that doesn't matter. If you're trying to shoot an animal on the run or a racing car then it probably does.
It's also worth noting that some DSLRs can also shoot shutterless and get a lot of the benefits of mirrorless.
The OVF lag on the high end models is significantly faster than the time it take the mirror to retract (a D5 SLR has about 40ms of shutter lag). This means that while you might have a very minimal lag on the EVF, you make up for it in shorter shutter lag.
Just a note: I used to do Photojournalism for a living. This kind of precision timing is irrelevant for action shooting. Once AF and motor drive happened, the technique shifted from trying to hit the decisive moment, to just mashing the shutter and picking the best shot from the series.
As you point out, 40ms delay doesn't matter for shutter timing. Coming at it from a gaming and controls perspective: delay can make it a little harder to track things, though. I don't know how big of a deal this is to real users. I do know that the sheer amount of blackout on almost all current mirrorless sucks.
> Once AF and motor drive happened, the technique shifted from trying to hit the decisive moment, to just mashing the shutter and picking the best shot from the series.
Yah, and this is a place mirrorless cameras win and even phone cameras perform very well-- 10 picture/second burst rate on iPhone which few DSLRs can match. Middle/lower end Canon now is hitting 15FPS mechanical shutter and 23FPS electronic/silent, which is absolutely nuts to me (I have memories of buying a "blindingly fast" 7FPS camera..)
The Z mount 14-24mm f/2.8 that's even sharper and has fewer optical flaws than the F-mount version.
> But here's the big thing with DSLRs over mirrorless: input lag for target tracking. An optical viewfinder ("OVF") is just inherently faster than any electronic viewfinder ("EVF"). For a lot of people that doesn't matter. If you're trying to shoot an animal on the run or a racing car then it probably doe
The only thing that matters here for something like the Z9 is the delta between hitting the shutter release and it capturing an image. That is indisputably longer, though short enough it doesn't matter for most folks.
For cameras like the Z7ii (which I have personal experience with), yes, tracking kind of sucks because of blackout (in 5 FPS mode) and really sucks in 10 FPS mode (where you're just seeing the last frame). Neither of those are in play for the Z9. I expect we'll see that trickle down to more cameras as time goes on.
And weighs 35% less, and is a bit smaller.
The old 14-24 is a mediocre lens compared new ultra wide zooms. Nikon hasn't got to an z-mount f2.8 yet, but their f4 is already sharper. When they do a f2.8 it likely will be even better.
The last market segment that was holding out was the Pro and Prosumer segment since initially mirrorless lagged on feature parity, especially in AF. Mirrorless cameras have effectively reached parity now.
Now there is, in real use, no advantage to SLR type cameras, and, pure guess, mirrorless are probably cheaper to make since you can dispense with an entire mechanical assembly.
There are big advantages of SLRs over mirrorless: battery life and speed.
I dread the day if I ever have to go to mirrorless, I really don't want those drawbacks.
If anyone has ever been in a service shop, and seen a DSLR, taken apart, you would be gobsmacked at the complexity of the mechanisms, therein.
Lots of moving parts. Hard to design, hard to make, hard to maintain, and hard to fix. Also, writing firmware to control all those moving parts is a nightmare.
Ideally, the lens should be the only part of the camera with a moving part.
I'm hoping that this means that they will finally embrace the concept of a "true" software-driven camera, but time will tell...
My camera isn't a mirrorless, but I'm actually glad it still has the focus motor inside it, because that means that I can go and buy an old cheap (but still good) second-hand lens that still uses the mechanical focus gear, and get autofocus. Some other camera bodies don't have that motor, so those older lenses are manual focus only with them. With the mirrorless, by dint of having a brand new lens mount, they were able to mandate that each lens has its own autofocus motor, but I just thought I'd point this reason to have more mechanical stuff in the camera out.
And of course I also have somewhere an old film camera where absolutely everything (except the lightmeter) works if you take the battery out. Quite how they got the precision to be able to set shutter speeds between seconds and 1/2000th of a second is quite beyond me.
If you meet the engineers and scientists that do this, you would understand. It's almost a religious obligation.
Also, I think a lot of anti-shake is now done with piezo. Not "true" "no moving parts," but close.
Photographers are a funny crowd. They have both the artist, and the craftsman. Some will not ever want to change their toolset, while others, will jump right onto the bandwagon.
Is this even news?
The Epson RD-1 is probably the first digital mirrorless interchangeable lens camera followed by the Leica M8. Understandably those were never meant to be replacements for modern SLRS.
The MFT format was the first autofocus mirrorless launching in 08. Sony was 2 years after that.
It's not surprising news, but it is news that a camera format that Nikon helped popularize, made them a household name, and has been making for about 70 years is now dead.
Why I don't think it it's big news to ordinary people is that it is not a huge difference for them. If I put a mirrorless camera in front of most people they would think it was an SLR. If you dig a little deeper you may find it even fits your old lenses with an adapter.
It is hard for ordinary people to see it as even an important development. A digital camera does not require a mirror, so they made one without it. Without the mirror it is possible to improve on certain things in a small way. The camera business is a nerd business. Even small changes are good for sales. Ordinary people don't care.
I suspect Nikon are being coy about this because they still have inventory of SLR cameras and lenses.
The truth of the matter is that as it comes to image quality, a DSLR is in no way inferior to mirrorless, it's just that mirrorless has several features helping you to take the shot.
There's quite a few types of photography where those features are close to irrelevant, not everybody does fast-moving sports photography.
Given that baseline capabilities are still excellent, you can exploit this transition to get a lot of value (and fun) out of the legacy.
If you now take a high-end DSLR, preferably on the cheap, you can make stunning photos with it for as long as it lasts, and nobody can tell that it is "obsolete". Modern DSLRs have incredible noise performance, a huge dynamic range, very high resolution.
Specifically for Nikon, lens hunting is also fun. For example, I have a f/1.2 from 1979. It's a stunning lens, all metal, manual aperture, ridiculously fast. And it works just as well as it did back then.
Unfortunately, it seems the market recognizes that high-end DSLRs are still excellent, second hand prices are not coming down, I've been monitoring this for years.
A-mount is big here. Sony dropped support here first, and the LA-EA adapters all have significant issues. Even today, in many cases, Sony mirrorless adapts better to Canon than to Sony A-mount.
Eating up other mounts would be big too. K-mount customers wanting to go mirrorless. Nikon and Canon would be big too, obviously.
That would open several markets:
- People looking to switch
- People wanting to use esoteric lenses (e.g. Minolta's 500mm f/8 reflex, STF lenses, some of the neater tilt-shifts, etc.)
- Less profitable, people wanting to use cheaper used lenses
In the long term, most people will switch to native lenses, eventually, as lens technology moves on too.
Out of curiosity, I went to the Leica store recently, to test out the Q2 monochrome (and the M11). It has a great lens, a great great 47mpx sensor, a even greater tactile experience and a sh*tty EVF. I can't fathom why non pros would by such a poor UX for $6000€ or so. On the other hand, the comparable M setup with its great but rather limiting UX would be over 10k.
I don't know about pros, but for amateurs, price and electronic UX feel like good reason to just stay retro and enjoy..
The EVF though was laggy, had weird focus picking/assist in manual mode, weird blueish white balance, the artificial depth of field preview ... I am sure it's featureful and better than the competition but I did not enjoy the experience, which is usually the brand trademark, rangefinder and so on.
I found the Fuji X100 hybrid EVF/OVF approach more pleasing.
Me not understanding the appeal doesn't mean others can't though. I wish you all the best with this camera.
I used to have a Leica M6. It was a lovely camera, but I actually really prefer to shoot with my Nikon FE2 to the Leica, and so I sold the M6. Hope it ended up in the hands of someone who enjoys it.
I also prefer looking through the lens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe SLR sales are down because of the kinds of people who would buy them and literally never use them, because now instead of thinking "I wish I had a camera for this vacation" (which they wouldn't use after buying), they just use their phone. That doesn't seem like a significant market though.
The alternative used to be a compact or bridge camera without an interchangeable lens, and those too have gone close to extinct.
Essentially, the market served by (D)SLRs has changed to be almost entirely pros and dedicated hobbyist photographers, which is a small market compared to "everyone who takes photos". And now, mirrorless is well on the way to taking over that small market. I'm an enthusiastic hobbyist photographer, and switched to mirrorless in 2014 (Fuji X-T1). I knew immediately after getting my first mirrorless camera that I would never buy another DSLR.
And as I saw her work with the camera, it's easy to see why the exodus to smartphones was so sudden and swift.
The truth is that a DSLR has the capability to create far better photos, and this is still true today, but it's not normie-proof.
They just want to point at something, push a button, and magically have a great photo. Where the subject they pointed at is in focus, sharp, correct colors, the like.
Next they see that focus is a massive problem, it's impossible to take a photo in the dark, some photos have weird color issues (white balance) and the whole thing just sucks.
Perhaps most depressing is that one of the key features, shallow depth of field, is pretty much seen as a bug: why isn't everything sharp?
They should learn how to use the DSLR, but they won't. Because they want high quality snapshots and aren't photographers for the sake of photography. The smartphone solves all of this for this particular goal.
If I'm going somewhere nice and know I know I'll want to take pictures I'll still take my mirrorless camera, but honestly phone cameras have gotten to the point where for a lot of shots the average person won't be able to tell the difference anyway. Dedicated cameras only really shine in extremes now, or if you're looking for a very specific shot.
[edit]: They do have medium-frame, but that's another league entirely.
I've been a Nikon shooter for 2 decades now, shooting with the D100, D70, D2S, D2X, D3X, D300, D700, D810 and D850. It's easier to list the Nikon lenses I didn't buy vs the ones I bought... which I didn't buy anything over an F2.8 aperture.
This is heart breaking for me.
Now Nikon expects me to buy into a new camera and new lens system...
That also removes the on-ramp to getting more into the ecosystem.
I've gone from no camera to spending as much as a car on camera gear in the last 3 years, and while I love it, I fully recognize the market forces at work here. It's a declining market with cellphones eating into it. In the end we'll likely see extremely expensive pro-level gear and slightly less expensive enthusiast gear, with the low and mid-end taken over completely by cellphones.
You still can't beat sensor area and optics size, but it might be good enough for most people.
So if you want a Nikon film camera - for reasons - better buy one now.
Sure, but it's not what you end up with once you stop looking at pretty projections and hit the shutter button.
Yeah, no.
https://bythom.com/newsviews/nikkei-needs-new-staff.html
It is self-evident that DSLRs are basically done—I would be surprised if any totally new cameras with actual flipping mirrors are introduced. But there’s no actual evidence that Nikon is stopping production of its remaining higher-end DSLRs.
they also recently released the new z30 whihc eschws the evf for just the backmuond display. its definitely a compromised design heavily geared towards youtubers rather than still photography but it uses the same mount and lenses and retails for $849 WITH lens.
https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/mirrorles...
I'd most definitely qualify either as Entry level so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
I myself sprang for the z5 for the full frame, absolutely loving it.
The camera bodies come and go.
The lenses are the investment and are long-lived.