Debunking The Mirrorless Hype (Article)

[JimMcClain]

...I thought we were supposed to copy and paste the entire article here instead of posting a link.

There's nothing wrong with linking to articles as long as they're not yours. The "Post the whole article" rule is intended to prevent people from using TPF as a click-bait repositiory and/or improving their SEO by having off-site links to their blog, etc.

I wouldn't think that TPF's rules or normal procedure could trump the law. Copyright infringement is a crime we should all be concerned about, not just where it applies to photographs, but also where it applies to the written word.

I enjoy a good article. If I am not the author, I will post an except, a few sentences or short paragraph. I will credit the author and provide a link to read the rest. I might also offer my opinion on the piece to get the conversation going. The excerpt falls under fair use. It's sometimes debated how much excerpt is too much and there is no clear legal definition. My own policy would be to determine the size of the excerpt based on the length of the article. If the article is more than a page, or has to be scrolled a significant amount to read the whole article, then I would feel safe in using a short paragraph that makes a salient point. Shorter articles would warrant only a few sentences.

This is the guideline I've used on various websites for more than a dozen years and I have never been taken to task by an author or copyright owner (the copyright owner is not always the author). I've been thanked by many for bringing good traffic to their websites, but most don't say anything.

Now, as far as the article linked to above is concerned, I found it interesting because I only looked at the narrow comparison the author intended me to look at: the weight factor. It appeared to be valuable information when considering the total weight of a good mirrorless, full-frame camera compared to another good DSLR with lens and battery. He wasn't wrong about Sony promoting the heck out of the weight factor and he wasn't wrong about the relatively few ounces difference between them.

My own research, limited as it may be, tells me that there are only a couple manufacturers of full-frame mirrorless cameras and only one in the same price range as my Nikon D810. The Sonys are about 10 ounces lighter. The lenses similar to mine are so close to the same weight they don't warrant mention. So, I would be carrying around 10 ounces less weight, give or take a few ounces. As weak as I am, I still haven't noticed any real struggles with my D810, partly because the problem with my lungs prevents me from carrying the camera around as long as a lot of other photographers do in a session.

So, I don't know where anyone would regard the article as "clickbait" or even if you know what that term is. In my opinion, it's not. It had some value to me and I happen to like the guy's writing style, so I got a little entertainment value out of it too. So, thanks, @nerwin, for sharing the link and your comments about it.

Jim

 

[Solarflare]

Debunking The Mirrorless Hype

I am truely annoyed by articles like this.

The advantages of mirrorless cameras are:

+ Can be made more compact and lightweight because of no mirror box - an advantage that increases with sensor size, since the mirror box will grow cubic while the sensor will only grow square (lenses also grow in cubic though).

+ Simpler construction by a magnitude, thanks to no mirrorbox.

+ Technological possibilities thanks to having an EVF (Always 100% accurate framing, colors displayed as in final picture, overexposure/zebras/life histogram, focus check/magnification/focus peeking, etc)

+ Short distance between Sensor and Lens, allowing smaller wide angle optics of higher quality if the sensor can handle correspondingly steep angles of light.

+ Large Autofocus area due to no issues with the mirror box (but APS-C DSLRs have a pretty good autofocus area too).

+ Accurate Autofocus possible thanks to contrast autofocus, which needs no calibration; these concepts could be further optimized by technologies such as single phase detect pixels (various), Canons dualpixels (basically phase detect in all pixels, without loss of light), or Panasonics advanced contrast autofocus which examines the Bokeh to find out how much the lens has to be moved, but needs exact knowledge of the lens used; systems that combine contrast and phase autofocus such as Nikon 1 can have "the best of both worlds".

The advantages of DSLRs are:

+ Dedicated autofocus system possible thanks to the mirrorbox, fast phase detect Autofocus that works even with action in low light (see above for advances to manage phase detect autofocus from the sensor itself).

+ Optical viewfinder that experiences no lag, develops no flickering in artificial light, doesnt blind the user in low light, and doesnt use current.

+ Much better battery life.

+ Established high quality production lines with an excess in high quality glas from the original producers, from secondary producers, and from old glas from the used market; tons of other tools as well, such as powerful flash systems.

And yet all people want to discuss about mirrorless is smaller and less weight. Pfft.

What I want is a mirrorless that comes with a large sensor and fully explores the possible advantages of mirrorless, as specified above. I hope the rumors of Fuji going medium format are true and will yield exactly such a system.