Originally posted by jake14mw Can someone educate me on the advantages of mirrorless? I remember when they were first discussed, people were talking about their smaller size, but since the lenses for them are so big, that doesn't really matter. Has Sony mirrorless been so successful because they were mirrorless, or because they had great features? Thanks.
In a lot of ways, it's good innovation. You don't really even need a shutter anymore, that's a holdover from film. You can simply tell the sensor when to blink on and off and for what duration. In theory, the lack of mirror saves space, but I think that advantage is quickly lost when you start mounting lenses to it.
The big disadvantages to me are two of the things that have me in Pentax. You can't have an optical viewfinder without a mirror. You either frame and focus in live view, like you did with the K-01 and you do with the Q or you have an electronic viewfinder, which makes the camera bigger again, but it's essentially a screen inside an eyepiece. I had a fuji camera years ago with one and hated it. They've gotten better, but still don't feel like home to me.
The other disadvantage is that Sony had no legacy glass to dis-infranchise, so everyone buying into it was buying into a new system anyway. Nikon and Canon's offerings introduced a new lens mount for that system that isn't compatible with their dSLR cousins. To my knowledge the Pentax K-01 is the only mirrorless that was at least ASP-C in sensor size that worked with the dSLR lens mount. That made it a compelling travel camera for people with larger, heavier Pentax dSLRs, but it was criticized for being big and ugly, by comparison and didn't do well enough to make more than one version of.
I think the KP is there to scratch that itch now. A K1 and a KP share the same lenses, but exist in different form factors and at different price points...and they both have really good optical view finders.