abirkill

I'm not so sure on-sensor autofocus has been cracked for use in wildlife and sports photography just yet -- it's pretty good for slow-moving subjects, but I've not seen an on-sensor autofocus system that can make a 400mm f/2.8 lens keep a jockey's eyes in focus. It's only a matter of time though.

As soon as it is though, I also expect that mirrorless cameras will rapidly infiltrate the pro sports and wildlife market. Burst mode will become as irrelevant as loading film -- sports photographers will simply record full-resolution RAW video and pick out the frame that they want in post.

> Wide angle prime: Samyang/Rokinon/Bower 7.5mm f/3.5 rectangular fisheye, 8mm f/3.5 Panasonic, 12mm f/2.0 Olympus

The focal lengths are there but the apertures are narrower than the most common full-frame wide-angle primes, e.g. 14mm f/2.8 or 24mm f/1.4. This means less light, and also, as discussed elsewhere, a much wider minimum depth of field on the m4/3 lenses, due to the smaller sensor. (I meant to say 'fast wide-angle primes' in my original post, my mistake).

> Long working distance macro: Olympus 60mm f/2.8, working distance 7.5" for 1:1 image

My understanding was that 7.5" was the MFD (the distance from the film/sensor to the subject), not the MWD (the distance from the front element to the subject), on this lens, but I haven't used it. This review seems to suggest a working distance of 90mm (~3.5 inches) at 1:1, but it may also be wrong:

http://savazzi.freehostia.com/photography/olympus60mm.html

If it does have a working distance of 7.5" at 1:1 that's very respectable -- up there with a 150mm, and not far below a 180mm full-frame macro.

> Fast super-telephoto: 100-300mm f/4.0-5.6 Panasonic

Again, the focal lengths here are good, and it's a zoom (try finding a 200-600mm zoom lens of any aperture for a full-frame camera), but the aperture is again a bit disappointing when compared to something like a 400mm f/2.8, both in terms of the amount of light it lets in and how shallow the depth of field is.

Don't misunderstand me -- there are a great range of lenses for both m4/3 and Sony NEX cameras, which cover the popular focal lengths and produce stunning results. They're also usually a lot cheaper (that Panasonic telephoto is around $600, vs. around $10,000 for a 400mm f/2.8 full-frame lens) and a lot lighter. But if you've already spent $10,000 on a 400mm f/2.8 for your full-frame camera (and are making money from it), you're probably going to want a lens that will give similar results before you go mirrorless, which I think was the author's point.

I'm pretty sure when he says 'depth of offerings', he's referring to niche lens types, rather than depth of field. He continues:

> Even the most mature of the mirrorless formats – Leica M and M4/3 – both lack any sort of perspective correction lenses, other than using a DSLR lens with a tilt or shift adaptor; there are no native solutions despite them being ideally suited to this kind of work because of live view.

Tilt-shift lenses, long working distance macro lenses, wide angle primes, and fast super-telephotos are all hard to find in mirrorless mounts.

I'm not suggesting that this will be the final evolution, merely a tipping point that I suspect will see Canon's mirrorless offerings take off.

Pros are going to be very reluctant to start buying several thousand dollars of lenses in a new and unproven (longevity-wise) lens mount, but may well buy a $1000 camera if an adapter lets it accept all of their existing lenses, keep the same focal length, and also turn their 16-35mm f/2.8 into a 16-35mm f/1.8.

With lenses like the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8, we are starting to see how depth of field issues might be improved. There's a very long way to go though.

I agree that it's very likely to happen, although I'm not sure we're there yet. The VF-4 EVF does finally have what I would call a 'barely-acceptable' resolution, but I think 4K resolution EVFs will be required to really equal the detail someone with good eyesight can see through a good optical viewfinder.

The other issue I've had with all EVFs I've tried (which doesn't include the VF-4) is the input lag is, although small, quite noticeable. Until that's fixed, EVFs are very unlikely to replace optical viewfinders for sports and wildlife photographers.

Similarly, it's hard to beat the speed of the phase-detect autofocus in professional bodies at the moment. Again, that's fixable, probably with a combination of better on-sensor phase detection and more advanced algorithms to mix phase-detect and contrast-detect data together, but I think we're still at least two generations away from a system that can accurately track a fast-moving and erratic object.

Once those issues are resolved though, I can very quickly see the DSLR losing significant market share. There's simply too many advantages to mirrorless cameras -- no heavy, soft, expensive retrofocus wide-angle lenses, no calibration issues between the focus module and the image sensor, no heavy mirror to flip out of the way for every shot, full exposure simulation through the viewfinder (and a host of useful overlays), etc. etc.

Some photographers, of course, don't need focus tracking, and can probably put up with a less-than-stellar viewfinder resolution, which is why a lot of landscape photographers (who also often don't need a narrow depth of field) are already moving towards mirrorless, at least as a second camera.

Personally, apart from the investment I have in SLR glass, I am looking forward to the advantages that mirrorless cameras will bring in a few years time.

I think a lot of pros will add a crop-frame mirrorless camera to their kit when Canon release their speed booster (and a decent EF-M body, which will probably be at the same time).

The ability to use existing full-frame lenses at the same focal lengths on a mirrorless camera, and gain a stop of light-gathering ability, will be a big draw.

When I enter fred@gmali.com on their validation demo, I get a 'Did you mean' message, but the icon is a warning indicator (yellow exclamation point), rather than the error indicator (red cross).

When I enter fred@gmal.com, I get a 'Did you mean' message, with the red cross error icon.

I presume this means that it's detecting that gmali.com is a valid domain and can receive e-mail, but for most people it's not what they actually meant, whereas gmal.com is both a probable typo and a domain that cannot receive e-mail, and therefore invalid.

In other words, I think it's doing the right thing, in that it's detecting that fred@gmali.com is a valid address, but warning you that it's not the correct one. I think there is definitely a usability improvement though, as it's easy to miss the yellow warning icon, and assume that it's actually telling you that you can't use that address.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the Accessibility Service hack only allows apps to read notifications?

One of the other advantages of this new API functionality seems to be that it will also allow apps to dismiss notifications, or detect when the user has dismissed a notification. This will allow notifications to be kept in sync between the system and an app (or on a linked device like a smartwatch), which is a very nice addition.