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07-26-2013, 03:54 PM   #46
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Do you think mirrorless will replace dslrs?

QuoteOriginally posted by philbaum Quote
Thanks for asking. I only found out about the specific time from a participant i saw at a coffee shop. There were only 3 or 4 other photographers there, and a video guy from the press perhaps or someone working for the tribes. They need a better media guy i'm thinking :-) Indians were courteous, but mostly they seemed to be thinking of the journey ahead. This is the 10th year they've held it and keeps getting larger every year. 27 canoes this year. A few of the photos:
The very first picture doesn't do much for me, the middle ones are good -- but the last picture tells all the story.....canoes heading into the fog, and the last team waiting to take off. Very well done, dude, really good work (especially on such an "improvised chance").

Thank you very much for sharing a rare sight!

08-02-2013, 06:23 AM   #47
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QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
In the distant future around 50 years from now it is likely, but at present it is rather painfully obvious that mirrorless has a long way to go before it comes even close to eclipsing DSLR cameras, let alone surpassing them.
50 years from now? Man, it has already begun! Today's mirrorless systems are a better option, not for everyone, but for some subset of photographers. Mirrorless cameras have their beachhead established, and it's only going to grow as the technology continues to improve.

The EVF offers significant advantages. You get a bright image even when shooting in low light. You can get a lot of useful shooting information overlaid, HUD-style. You can see a close approximation of what your camera is going to actually capture, with WB, color settings and filters already applied.

I don't think the DSLR is going to disappear any time soon, if it all. There are things it does better, and it's going to continue doing them better for A While. However... What you need to realize when we talk about DSLRs is that we're not, for the most part, talking about professional photographers, or even advanced amateurs. Great masses of "entry level" DSLRs have been sold to people who aren't really interested in learning about photography, are never going to take off the kit lens, and are never going to turn the mode dial off AUTO. This never really made sense to begin with, but it was just a phenomenon based on fashion and marketing. I'm sure those buyers can easily be lured to a different system with the right sales pitch.
08-02-2013, 07:17 AM   #48
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QuoteOriginally posted by Tony Belding Quote
50 years from now? Man, it has already begun! Today's mirrorless systems are a better option, not for everyone, but for some subset of photographers. Mirrorless cameras have their beachhead established, and it's only going to grow as the technology continues to improve...
:

Hold on, just a minute, please.

I think you are confusing means and ends: mirrorless technology is just one possible way to take photographs, and you think that is an end in itself?

No — the end is the remarkable photographic experience, the excitement, enjoying the creative moment, artist's selection of an emotion, and is already perfectly achievable with SLRs, DSLRs, rangefinders, view cameras, etc.

Apostles of mirrorless behave like deprived and handicapped, and their way is "the way of future".

Calm down son, you are chasing wild geese. The clear pentaprism already connects me with reality I want to experience when taking a photograph — and much more intimately so than any electronic display that sits in between my eyes and the world I want to experience with my naked eyes.

If you think the picture you see on the screen, or printed out on paper is the only end product in the photographic experience, then think twice — that is just a BYPRODUCT. The real product is somewhere within.
08-02-2013, 07:21 AM   #49
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QuoteOriginally posted by Tony Belding Quote
I don't think the DSLR is going to disappear any time soon, if it all. There are things it does better, and it's going to continue doing them better for A While. However... What you need to realize when we talk about DSLRs is that we're not, for the most part, talking about professional photographers, or even advanced amateurs. Great masses of "entry level" DSLRs have been sold to people who aren't really interested in learning about photography, are never going to take off the kit lens, and are never going to turn the mode dial off AUTO. This never really made sense to begin with, but it was just a phenomenon based on fashion and marketing. I'm sure those buyers can easily be lured to a different system with the right sales pitch.
Read this really brief description of the advanced technologies introduced by the Yashica Electro rangefinder line of cameras. Ken Rockwell also has a decent blog on this camera.

They were very popular - consumer cameras, not enthusiast cameras - in the 60's and 70's. The Yashica Electro Rangefinder (and competitor imitations) should have prevented the rise of reflex cameras. People really had to wait almost a decade for OTF metering in an Olympus SLR or LX that had been available in a GSN. Nevertheless the SLR prevailed.

In order to survive, and continue to dominate the entry-level consumer market, the fixed-lens camera was forced to cheapen itself to the point of an Instamatic, then the long string of compact Canon, Minolta, Nikon and other auto-everything grandma cams from the 80's and 90's.

I'm not so sure the EVF will be a disruptive, leading-technology improvement that paves the road for MILC's. Why add the expense of an EVF to a dying segment? Compact cameras are already dead by iPhone.

08-02-2013, 07:58 AM   #50
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When it comes to shooting, my preference is for film rangefinders and digital liveview. The one thing that made SLRs useful, the ability to see exactly what image will be captured, is done better with live view. Everything else that goes with having a reflex mirror system, the weight, size, low light viewfinder brightness, mirror shake is a minus. Even if you have eagle eyes, with an slr focus is not as accurate as a well calibrated rangefinder, particularly in low light. 2nd best is being able to zoom in for focus with a bright live view screen.

Will DSLRs disappear? Probably not, but I can't think of any good reason to use one, except that for at the moment, most of the 'top class' digital cameras are SLRs. There may be a slight edge in auto focus for SLRs at the moment, but any advantage is going to be reduced to nil when the processors in digicams improve just a little bit and currently available machine vision algorithms go consumer.

If you're the type to be mystical about the real image being 'within' then I suggest you try shooting with a rangefinder or zone focus film camera and tap your inner image for composition. You'll get to enjoy the surprise of discovering what was within after processing. There is nothing about a pentaprism that offers an improvement in that regard.

SLRs will still have their place for film shooting, but for digital it really seems like a stopgap technology.
08-02-2013, 08:07 AM   #51
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The rollfilm camera replaced the view camera and in itself was replaced by the minature camera (35mm). Digital dslrs are just a continuance of the 35mm. Mirrorless will replace dslrs. Cartridge cameras to a lesser extent replaced roll film cameras with amost exclusively amatuer as in family snapshots etc.

View cameras roll film cameras and to a less extent 35mm film cameras are still be made and still being used today. Mirrorless will replace dslrs for a large market segment. I see quite a few within our camera club only shooting mirrorless and some others adding them to their toolkit. DLSRs will remain with us as well. So if you mean that dslrs will disappear the answer will be no but if you say that more people will buy a mirrorless than a dslr I believe the answer is yes. Currently have no plans on purchasing one though but then not interested in a FF either. Three of the last four cameras we got were mirrorless: an Iams cat food container, an Ovatine can and a rectangular metal cookie box all became pinhole cameras with no reflex or mirrors involved.
08-02-2013, 08:25 AM   #52
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QuoteOriginally posted by verdigris Quote
If you're the type to be mystical about the real image being 'within' then I suggest you try shooting with a rangefinder or zone focus film camera and tap your inner image for composition. You'll get to enjoy the surprise of discovering what was within after processing. There is nothing about a pentaprism that offers an improvement in that regard.
My point - not clearly stated - was that I don't believe an Electronic Eye-Level Viewfinder (which replaces the mirror / pentaprism assembly) will be disruptive enough quickly enough to arrest development of the traditional dSLR.

However, moving the 3" or larger LCD from the rear of the camera to the left side, articulating it and mounting lenses latitudinally rather than longitudinally (at the end, like an old mini-cam) would allow me binocular vision of the electonic image, better sun-shading capability, better control of the camera body and a familiar muscle memory learned at the end of the video camera days.

08-02-2013, 08:30 AM - 1 Like   #53
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QuoteOriginally posted by Tony Belding Quote
The EVF offers significant advantages. You get a bright image even when shooting in low light. You can get a lot of useful shooting information overlaid, HUD-style. You can see a close approximation of what your camera is going to actually capture, with WB, color settings and filters already applied.
you also get more of the usual compromises from EVF's: laggy shutter response, limited dynamic range and colour gamut* as well as the fact that for live view purposes the sensor is always on - which means the sensor and the associated circuitry gets hot - and heat increases noise and also increased battery drain - My Nikon D4 can shoot well over 3000 images per charge, my K5IIs can shoot around 1000 images on a single charge - how many EVF only cameras can do the same?


*many people are quick to mention the that EVF's give a WYSIWYG view of what the sensor is capturing - in actuality this couldn't be further from the truth. Most LCD displays are 8 bit devices, these days sensors are pushing 12-14 Bits per pixel so manufacturers have to compress the dynamic range, as well as the colour gamut. It goes without saying that OVFs do not have any of these issues.

Last edited by Digitalis; 08-02-2013 at 08:35 AM.
08-02-2013, 08:50 AM   #54
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QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
They were very popular - consumer cameras, not enthusiast cameras - in the 60's and 70's. The Yashica Electro Rangefinder (and competitor imitations) should have prevented the rise of reflex cameras. People really had to wait almost a decade for OTF metering in an Olympus SLR or LX that had been available in a GSN. Nevertheless the SLR prevailed.
Ever owned a Yashica GSN? I did. Sold it recently.

BIG rangefinder. Clunky to use. Excellent but somewhat fragile mount lens. Parallax error. No control of shutter speed.

Because of these limitations they were really only masterful at snapshooting within a moderate FL. Most of the popular RF's until the 1970's including the Olympus XA series were.

The moment RF lenses got to very wide or long (they really cannot do any tele work) you have VF issues with the brightlines. This severely limits lens choice and designs, and pretty much prohibits much more utilitarian zooms. This is why single FL P&S's like the Ricoh series were rare and pricey.

Small SLR's like the OM series, and later the Pentax MX and small Nikons were really not all that much larger than a RF like an Canon QL (which I also owned). That contributed to their marketplace mastery. Until the Olympus XA none were really pocketable either. A bag or around the neck. Even my Rollei 35 is not really pocektable. Once you're out of the pocket and on a leash, a small SLR is actually a reasonable mix of features, flexibility (AA battery grip option, macro lenses) and usability.

What really killed the RF was the zoom lens paired with a P&S and auto-metering.

Will mirrorless replace the DSLR? I think they will continue to co-exist for a very long time. The purity of the DSLR optical path has a huge loyalty even amongst new camera enthusiasts. There are still lots of negatives to an EVF and will be for the foreseeable future. This is not an either/or scenario both in the tech and in the market response.
08-02-2013, 09:29 AM   #55
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QuoteOriginally posted by Aristophanes Quote
Rollei 35 is not really pocektable
The only cameras that were pocketable in any sense of the word were the sub-minature format cameras like the ones made by Minolta and Minox.
08-02-2013, 12:18 PM   #56
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QuoteOriginally posted by Aristophanes Quote
Ever owned a Yashica GSN? I did. Sold it recently.
Yep - have one right now. It came attached to the Tele-Wide external VF I bought to use with my K-01 and Q. Also have an XA (great little pocket cam that is). And an Optio A40 that actually is still my preferred party camera when I can get it away from my wife.

I still don't understand the pocketable MILC fetish They're not pocketable with a lens mounted.
08-02-2013, 02:47 PM   #57
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QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
The only cameras that were pocketable in any sense of the word were the sub-minature format cameras like the ones made by Minolta and Minox.
Contax T2 and T3 were not as bad as pocket cameras. Even today's Ricoh GR isn't as bad; it may slide in the jeans pocket.
08-02-2013, 04:08 PM   #58
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QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
I'm not so sure the EVF will be a disruptive, leading-technology improvement that paves the road for MILC's. Why add the expense of an EVF to a dying segment? Compact cameras are already dead by iPhone.
So who said anything about compact cameras? I thought we were talking about mirrorless system cameras.

I don't buy this story that everyone is spinning about how camera phones will devastate the entire photographic industry. Phones are rapidly replacing the little pocket cameras like the ELPH/IXUS, but so what? That's not the space that either DSLRs or MILCs play in, anyhow. System cameras (both DSLRs and mirrorless) have been a step up for people who started out with pocket cameras, and now they're going to be the step up for people who started with camera phones. If anything, I suspect the ubiquitous nature of camera phones is going to lead to more people getting interested in photography, and eventually to more interest in "serious" cameras as well.

As for the need of an EVF... My K-01 is pretty near useless outdoors on a bright summer day. The OM-D handles it okay; the view through the EVF isn't beautiful, but it gets the job done.
08-02-2013, 04:29 PM   #59
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QuoteOriginally posted by Tony Belding Quote
So who said anything about compact cameras? I thought we were talking about mirrorless system cameras.
Certainly not I.
08-02-2013, 07:03 PM   #60
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QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
The only cameras that were pocketable in any sense of the word were the sub-minature format cameras like the ones made by Minolta and Minox.
Well don't forget the folders. This 1951 35mm Retina has a lovely Xenar lens, and slides into your pocket. I love these works of art, although the early ones have very small view finders.
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