Recommendation include NOT to buy a DSLR

It's a shame sales don't totally reveal that here in the USA. Thom Hogan's sansmirror.com has some sales figures and it's growing quicker overseas apparently.

The awful thing is some of the best mirrorless producers simply aren't making money.
 
The readership doesn't appear to be too impressed (or rather, informed).

I don’t see the appeal in mirrorless cameras. At least for now. The only main advantage I see being flaunted around is that they are “smaller and lighter”. Usually when someone decides to go for a DSLR it’s because they want better quality and better control, and to achieve things you can’t normally do with a point-and-shoot. Without trade-offs. What’s the point of a “smaller and lighter” body, if you’re still going to have to carry 3 or 4 lenses (wide, standard 50mm, telephoto, and macro if you’re into that stuff) around?

A mirrorless is a nice, solid upgrade from a point and shoot, or an even nicer upgrade from a smartphone, no arguing. In the league of even a cheap DSLR like the T4i… they are not. But at least, with some models, you can keep your investment in glass when moving to the real thing later.

Basically right IMO, but there are three areas where mirrorless cameras are even more behind… high ISO performance (quality), lack of viewfinders (composition)..........Ever tried to compose an architectural shot using an extreme wide-angle lens without a viewfinder? It is impossible. Not hard. Impossible.

Once a camera is too large to fit into your pocket, the size of it really doesn’t matter all that much.

Mirrorless cameras are not equivalent to DSLRs. The lack of an optical viewfinder alone makes these cameras just expensive toys.
 
Lack of an optical viewfindermakes them expensive toys. Who assigned that guy as God of the cameras? I guess he doesn't know about Fuji's hybrid finder. I like optical finders, but they have nothing to do with picture quality and are a personal preference.

No mirror = bad camera. Someone should tell that to people shelling out $10,000 for an M9 and lens. What makes a mirror so GD special? It was a means to an end, not the holy grail.

Misinformed, for sure. And totally reactionary. But they are singing yesterday's song, whether they like it or not.

So their crappy, mid-range, 5 year old Aps-C Canon with a couple of cheap lenses is better than my OM-D with the Summilux 25mm because it has a mirror that goes flap/whack!@ I don't think so.

I guess these idiots think that making a categorical statement makes it fact, even if it is just aggressively ill-informed.





The readership doesn't appear to be too impressed (or rather, informed).
 
I usually make it a point to read comments in any online article I read. There are usually gems that really make me chuckle (e.g. today on an article about the actual person who suffered the "Amityville Horror", one comment said something like "I experience it daily at home, and divorce is the only solution."), and from time to time those that make me lose faith in humanity. Either way they get my blood flowing. :D
 
I should add to my rant above, that I have nothing against SLR's. My beloved Hasselblad is an SLR, as are my OM film cameras, and I very much enjoyed using by E-510 for a number of years.

But it does get under my skin when people are so misinformed as to really believe big is necessarily better and that a mirror makes the man, and then get quite nasty in evangelizing for their preference. 35mm type digital SLR's still have important functions where mirrorless cameras don't yet replace them. But the pace of technological advance is undermining those last bastions of their primacy. The Sony RX1 does not have to apologize to anything out their for the photos it can deliver, and it doesn't come with a viewfinder at all. (No I do not have one) But it's amazing sensor and stunningly capable Zeiss lens place it with the best. It's dedicated to a certain type of shooting, but there have always been cameras like that, and the best of them (think Leica) were decidedly NOT toys. I think the "I'm the champion because of my SLR" attitude is held over from the days when camera stores and marketing departments liked to push anyone who was getting serious about their photography into a single lens reflex. Despite the specialness some of their current advocates seem to feel, most 35mm SLR''s were sold to amateurs; they were small format cameras for enthusiasts (mostly) -- and journalists, precisely because of their portability over the hulking press cameras of yore, and -- no denying -- their versatility.

They remain what they always were, one photographic tool among many. To fetishize them is a bit weird.
 
And besides all that, Canon is not now, nor was it ever, "the most affordable".

I didn't mean to single out Canon, but rather just used it as an example. I was trying to say that an SLR with any manufacturer's lesser glass is not going to hold a candle to a mirrorless camera with really good glass. I have nothing against Canons -- or mirrors for that matter! -- but a complex mechanical moving mirror, coupled with the usual kit lens, doesn't necessarily give anyone bragging rights over a good mirrorless machine with premium glass.

But the Canikon SLR crowd have been raging to retain their place apart for some time -- first against 4/3, as against their barely larger Aps-c sensors, now against mirrorless. They remind me of the crowd of French aristocrats burying the heart of the never crowned Louis XVII a couple of years back. The spectacle of their continuing love for the historical primacy of their class was rather grotesque.
 
I didn't mean to single out Canon, but rather just used it as an example.
oh... I'm confused now... I was responding to the OP and the blog article... sorry :-/

I was thinking about when I bought my first digital SLR (already had a Minolta SRT) and the camera shop guys were pushing me at a 450D or 1000D (the latter was a PoS, IMO), and it was going to cost HUNDREDS to buy either of them (at the time I think the 450D over here was somewhere around $AU1600 or more) and I went to another store and bought a weather resistant K200D, with a top LCD and many of the features of the so-called "pro" cameras, for $650. That was affordable. The Canons were not (and whats more they didnt even have features that the K200D had as standard). The other thing about the K200D was that I bonded with it almost straight away... I have never bonded with any DSLR (including my K5) in the same way, since.
 
I think mirrorless has its place and dslr's do as well. It just depends on what you're doing. Trends are interesting to see, to study, however it isn't always all one way or the other even if one is enthusiastic about a type of camera or a brand.
 
It's possible to be on both sides of this issue. I enjoy my enthusiast cameras (Fuji X100/X10 and Panny G5/GX1) but I've been very frustrated by missed shots of my grandchildren due to slow focus and inability to follow the action. So I took a retrograde step and bought a refurb Canon 7D. Yes, it's very heavy, but my first look through the bright viewfinder and a quick 8 fps burst told me that this important aspect of my photo life should improve. We'll see; I'll be chasing them around this weekend! And my SC's will continue to rule in areas where portability is desired/needed.
 
On the one hand, when I see people with little idea about the workings of cameras (you know the ones I'm talking about, and you can spot them too) who are reliably and inevitably lugging D3100's with kit lenses around Harvard Square snapping pics on full auto, I am happy. Because part of me is still that 20-something year old music snob who likes it better when people haven't heard of my favorite bands. I don't want to see TOO many people walking around with the X100. I like that it is still unique.

On the other hand, I need Fuji to make money on them and keep making more of them... keep improving them. So they need to sell, and at a profit.

And finally, internet comments are troll magnets. I find I pretty much just cant read them without losing faith in humanity. It's easier to picture them all as 16 year olds in mom's basement pretending to be fully mature adults on the internet, (which is true more often than you'd believe.)
 
I can see why they come to that conclusion when comparing with Canon ......... but I'm a Nikon shooter so no problem saying that DSLRs are best
 
I just don't like working with DSLRS, i don't have fun using them except sony alpha cameras...
but then again , those are not your typical dslr cameras too :D
 
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