Are DSLR Cameras Going Extinct? | Hacker News Reader

Are DSLR Cameras Going Extinct?

blind-magazine.com

7 pointsdisadvantage9 comments

Why, are they needed?

SLR was a technology to enable viewing the subject through the lens when another kind of eyefinder with a through-the-lens view was not possible.

Now it is: you can have a digital viewfinder that shows the same through-the-lens captured image.

I've only recently acquired a DSLR camera, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I think the big advantage with DSLR cameras is battery life. DSLR cameras only need to activate the sensor when taking a photo, and especially with the large sensors that accompany DSLRs, this can help to extend the camera's battery life.

On the other hand modern batteries for mirrorless have twice or more the shooting time of batteries for DSLRs when they dominated the market (manufacturers paid special attention to this to improve video times).

I'd say for photography, it's beyond what most would care about anyway, you can go shoot 300-400 pictures all day and not have to recharge. And if you need to shoot longer, you could carry a pound or less battery in your pocket.

The weight will be offset by the much smaller weights of mirrorless cameras and mirrorless camera lenses - as the former don't need to carry a prism mechanism, and the latter can be made smaller and closer to the sensor area.

That is true. It is nice if you spend large amounts of time off-grid (and away from a car), but even that is nowadays not so much a concern I think. I.e. I can much more easily bring some sort of powerbank to charge batteries on the go than 10-15 years ago, and the batteries themselves probably have gotten better too.

The digital viewfinder is the main thing that has kept me from buying a mirrorless camera yet to replace my old DSLR: in anything that'd be affordable they are annoying, I can see the pixels, they cause moire with busy surfaces. I keep waiting for that to get better, but it's not really a focus of development it seems. That's not to say a digital viewfinder doesn't also have benefits, but at the current state of tech it's not a no-brainer. Which is annoying, because otherwise overall mirrorless clearly wins for me.

EDIT: but for the title question, I'm also not particularly keen on buying a DSLR instead...

Well, on the other hand digital viewfinders can also zoom the image to nail the focus, show zebre stripes for over/under exposed areas and so on...

The quote is about the shift to mirrorless vs DSLR, and the article seems to misinterpret that to support the conclusion that phone cameras are killing photography. They even throw in a random comment about film photography in the last paragraph.

Canon is still making cameras, and Sony is having more success than ever with the mirrorless transition. Changing the label doesn’t mean that photography is dying.

Yes, I thought the whole thing was a muddle. I thought the reference to film would tie into SLR not really being suitable but it didn't. No mention of long lenses unless I missed it.

At various points over the last decade, I've been picking up bargains as one generation of camera type is discarded in favour of another one. This year I've bagged a Canon 5D4 and a Pentax 645Z.

I have a Q2 as well and the one advantage the viewfinder confers is the ability to stay at one brightness regardless of the external levels of light. But latency will never match up. Hopefully I'll be dead before they stop making optical viewfinders.

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