Originally posted by beholder3 Generally you'll find close nobody who a) shows photos which obviously go to any gear limits and b) then complains in a forum about the gear limitations.
But you get hundreds of people who complain on the whining side over and over again that they "need" brandnew feature X, whilst not haveing any meaningful background in any genre which would need it. e.g. need 4k120p for shooting a cat on the sofa in the dark.
There are small things that can't be explained with photos and there are things that can be explained with photos, but you receive comments from people who don't shoot the same things and they don't understand the challenges... And let me explain...
1. Speed (fps). I was involved in some discussions in this forum where people told me that shooting at 10-12 or 14fps it's just spray and pray. Now, the same people are happy when they see the 12fps in K3 Mark III.
I showed pictures with some horses jumping some obstacles taken with cameras with 4-5fps and I explained why 10fps can make a difference in getting much better images CONSTANTLY, instead of random ones. There is a big difference in getting images constantly and getting random images of a difficult subject.
2. Af-C or tracking capabilities - no matter how many fps a camera has, if the af system can't handle it, it basically cancel half of the fps. Again, it's hard to explain af to people who shoot random action at f8-f9 for example with a 55-300mm lens. There is a big difference in getting the shot at f5.6 and 600mm or at f2.8 at 300mm and getting the shot at f8 and 300mm. There is also a big difference in the look of the image. It's also hard to explain the difference in focusing and tracking at f8 when you add a 2x TC on an f4 lens.
Most cameras can focus but few can track the subject.
Getting back to mirrorless vs. DSLR. I have quite a lot experience with both systems. The most common problem I see regarding mirrorless system is the EVF. I understand the complains about headaches because I had them and I had to "train" my eyes to get read of eyes stain and headaches by making pauses after 20 minutes of shooting through EVF. Fortunately, I don't have any more problems with EVFs and since the new generation of EVFs, the problem becomes smaller and smaller among the ones I talked to. That doesn't mean that the eye pain doesn't exist anymore for some people.
Another problem I hear about regarding mirrorless is handling and this is (was) Sony and Fuji problem. Sony with the new generation of camera pretty much solved the handling problem and Canon or Nikon mirrorless cameras are similar to Pentax K-3 in terms of size and grip.
When comes to mirrorless advantages, people always go for the same thing, the image quality, which is not different (better or worse) than an image taken with a DSLR. Most people who are interested in mirrorless don't put image quality first because they know it's not a deciding factor. Last weekend I organized a shooting session in studio, the main objective being Studio portraits with 2-3 light. I had 6 participants: me with EOS R, one with a D850, one with a 6D, one with a D610, one with an old Canon 450D, and 2 with Sony (A6400 and A6500). The only advantage I had with my mirrorless was the ability to concentrate on composition because eye af handled the model to be in focus no matter where she was in the frame. The ones with DSLRs had to focus and recompose or to select the focus point closer to the eye. Given that in studio we shoot between f5.6 and f8, we can focus on neck or nose because there is enough DOF to hide any focus errors. Then, we took some portraits without flashes, at fast apertures. Here the eye af showed the advantage of the mirrorless. Focus and recompose technique was the worse in terms of consistency. The situation was even more obvious when we told the model to move as we often shoot people at events for example. Again, mirrorless showed a big advantage with the eye af at fast apertures.
Then, there is the silent shutter that is great, even with some of it's limitations.
Also, when you shoot in challenging situations, seeing exactly how the image will look it's very nice. An experienced photographer knows when he has to overexpose or underexpose a shot. Even then you need to take 1-2 images and check them on the LCD. Also, in bright days, reviewing an image in the EVF it's a lot easier than looking at the DSLR lcd.
There are some small features of mirrorless than can't be explained with images but they make the life of a photographer easier, depending also on what you shoot. You can get the same images with a DSLR? Sure you can. It's just that with mirrorless you can do it faster and with more consistency in certain situations, depending of course on what you shoot.
The advantages of my former camera, a 5D mark IV over my current camera (EOS R) are:
- focus tracking on very fast subjects like european bee eater or kingfisher
- OVF.
When comes to focus tracking, I suspect it had a lot to do with the lag of the EVF also. R5 and R6 on the other hand makes 1Dx III to look less mighty than it is and sometime the flagship it's a little under R5 and R6 due to animal af found in the mirrorless bodies.
So yes, the main advantage of DSLRs remain for some people the OVF as it seems. Other than that, personally I can't find other advantages after shooting side by side with lots of mirrorless and DSLRs, from entry level ones to flagships.