THE TRUTH ABOUT SWITCHING TO MIRRORLESS CAMERAS: DSLR vs mirrorless cameras explored

Hello everyone, welcome back to a new video. Have you been thinking about purchasing a

mirrorless

camera and wondering if the benefits of the

mirrorless

camera have finally tipped the scales in your favor or if there are issues like price, battery life and available lenses holding you back in this video? I'll walk you through all the pros and cons of mirrorless and DSLR

cameras

and help you decide which one is right for you. You'll want to stay until the end for my bonus tip where I address one of the most common issues around mirrorless

cameras

and that's very misunderstood, my name is Simo Dalton and I'm a professional nature and wildlife photographer living in eastern Canada.

I make weekly videos that give you photography tips or take you behind the scenes for nature photography. Subscribe if you want to see more, shut your mouth sometimes. First of all, I have to give you a quick warning about people impersonating me in the comments below offering you prizes. These are scammers, don't contact them, keep reporting them like I do, so let's start by understanding the difference between DSLR and mirrorless cameras DSLR means digital single lens reflex, these cameras have a mirror in front of the sensor and the mirror is for a couple of purposes first, when you are not taking a photo, the mirror is facing down in front of the sensor and is directing the light that passes through its lens upwards to what is called a pentaprism which again directs the light towards the viewfinder and your eye as such the image you see in the viewfinder is the real light and the image you are looking at your camera lens so this is called an optical viewfinder when you want to take a photo you press the shutter button and the camera raises the mirror to expose the shutter in front of the sensor to the light and then the shutter goes up to reveal the sensor, as you can see there are a lot of moving parts here a mirrorless camera has a different setup instead of having an optical viewfinder, It has a small electronic screen in the viewfinder that shows what the sensor sees in real time like a small television, since there is no need to send an optical image to the viewfinder, the mirror assembly is not necessary in the flip-up mechanism and Down, the sensor and shutter are simply exposed to the front of the camera, where the lens is, so most mirrorless cameras just have a mechanical shutter in front of the sensor to help take an exposure, some cameras even They make without any shutter and just read the information digitally, what we call electronic shutter, by the way, a DSLR can almost act like a mirrorless camera when it's live, that's when the mirror is up and you However, we're looking at the rear LCD screen and we noticed that the viewfinder does not work in this mode, so let's look at the differences between these cameras and start with something we have already looked at in the viewfinder, since we saw that a mirrorless camera has an electronic viewfinder, this has some Advantages: First, the image displayed in the viewfinder is adjusted to the exposure your current settings will take, so if the photo is going to be too bright or too dark, you will see this in real time, allowing you to adjust the exposure, you can even see a small histogram in the viewfinder and many other things can be shown including zebras and setting details, these are a big benefit if your photo is under or overexposed, like in this example, the view from the viewfinder tells you and you can adjust your camera settings before pressing the shutter button on a DSLR.

The viewfinder does not show you what the exposure will look like. If your photo is going to be overexposed or underexposed, you get some indication using the light meter, but no. I don't know until after you take the photo, you take a photo and look at the rear LCD or, when you get home, you find out if the photo was correctly exposed on the negative side of the electronic viewfinders or evfs. an electronic viewfinder, especially the first mirrorless cameras that were on the market, the color balance may be a little off compared to what your eye expects and the resolution may be lower than that of your optical viewfinder, there may also be blackouts when your camera takes exposures that are said that many of these problems are being addressed by camera manufacturers and that newer models are increasingly looking like optical viewfinders.

The electronic viewfinder on my Canon R5, for example, can be set to a softer setting. It looks natural and has little darkening at first. I found that the color balance was not to my liking even if it is adjustable now I don't even notice an extra note on a DSLR reviewing your images on the rear LCD screen on a sunny day can be very difficult because the light dulls the LCD screen With a mirrorless camera, you can also review your images by looking at the electronic viewfinder, which is a very useful feature. One thing that mirrorless cameras are also bringing to the table is that higher shutter speeds can be achieved without needing to move the mirror box up and down. with each exposure as such, we are seeing mirrorless cameras with really high shutter speeds that sometimes come with electronic shutter exposures of 30 or more photos per second, although they are not a great benefit for a portrait or landscape wildlife photographer and sports.

This is a great opportunity. to capture the perfect moment here is an example of 20 frames per second in the ability to capture the perfect moment, although electronic shutters can warp fast-moving subjects through an effect called rolling shutter, so it may not be suitable for everyone Another advantage that mirrorless cameras are bringing is silent shooting, as they do not need to lift the mirror out of the way, which contributes to some of the noise that DSLRs make when taking a photo, combined with an electronic shutter to taking an exposure mirrorless cameras can operate completely silently weddings chess matches recitals or any other place where we are making clicking sounds would be out of the question shooting silently is a huge advantage the ability to focus is an area that can may have started out as a disadvantage to mirrorless cameras but is becoming an advantage because early mirrorless cameras did not always compete with DSLRs for focusing ability and speed.

DSLRs had mastered the use of phase-detection autofocus and were very reliable and fast, but the early use of contrast-based focusing systems in mirrorless cameras had not. I have not yet been tuned to the same capacity. Some friends added a mirrorless camera to their wildlife arsenal only to leave it at home and go out with DSLRs because they couldn't focus on fast-moving subjects. Some automatic contrast-based approaches. Popular systems on mirrorless cameras also get stuck in the background when something appears too close to you, the autofocus won't pull back because the subject is too out of focus. This has been a problem, but many of the newer mirrorless cameras have solved it.

All this said For photographers, focusing the eye is often an important objective. Another variant of this is subject tracking, which works similarly but looks for moving subjects such as cars, airplanes, or any other object. One of the main benefits of ion subject detection is that all or most of the sensor can be used for it, where DSLRs often have their focus points in the center of the frame, meaning we no longer have We don't have to worry about focus and recomposition, which is a technique used with DSLRs to place the subject at the edge of the frame.

With mirrorless, simply find the subject in the frame and place it anywhere to compose the shot and the focus will remain fixed. in it. It only took me 10 minutes to find and use this advantage on my first outing with an auto-detect equipped camera. I was just a few minutes into my walk when I came across a duck dipping its head and I knew it would get up and shake itself off. I simply lowered the focus and pressed the shutter button, since everything happened in one flash, the camera focused on the eye, even if it was outside the range my DSLR would normally cover, the focus points my DSLR would have been centered on the wings instead of on the head, in short, although top-tier mirrorless cameras outperform DSLRs with autofocus, this is not a universal victory, the best DSLRs still outperform many of the entry-level mirrorless cameras, although the trend shows that mirrorless capabilities are improving all the time and will continue to break new ground and autofocus capabilities, and some manufacturers, seeing all the benefits, are putting their top-notch autofocus capabilities even in their base models, we've had stabilization in lenses for a long time.

This is a great feature that smoothes out camera shake and helps us get sharper photos with lower shutter speeds. This is what my handheld 500 millimeter lens looks like with and without stabilization on, but this has now been added to the sensors of some mirrorless cameras and is called Ibis in body image stabilization. Here it is with sensor stabilization disabled and now with it enabled, you can see how this is a huge benefit to getting sharp photos and stable video footage. It's actually an added benefit to stabilizing the lens so they work together. It can allow people to take ridiculously long exposures handheld, like half a second or even a full second.

This technology doesn't really work well with DSLRs because the mirror blocks the sensor. where all this magic happens as such, this is a mirrorless feature, but it is not offered on all models. Some of the base mirrorless models may not have it. Note that sensor stabilization mitigates camera shake, not subject motion, if your subject moves in the middle of the exposure and you don't have enough shutter speed to freeze it your subject will appear blurry in the photo now let's talk about lenses, this is a mixed bag, the good news is that most DSLR lenses can be adapted to mirrorless and work quite well with an adapter.

It's used to make up for the space the mirror assembly was taking up and allows you to use your DSLR lenses on your mirrorless camera, that's what I'm doing with my big 500 millimeter F4 lens while I wait for the mirrorless equivalent to be released and it works brilliant. The reason this is so important is that you can transition your camera body to mirrorless and still use your old DSLR lenses. You can transition to mirrorless lenses over time and these adapters do not affect image quality because all they are is a spacer to replace the depth in the mirror assembly that a DSLR takes up with contacts for the electronics. of its camera and its lens to be able to communicate with each other, they do not have glass.

The downside is that there aren't that many lenses on the market for mirrorless systems yet. and the used lens market is not that strong, some lens options are very expensive and some manufacturers don't allow third parties like Sigma Rokinon or Tamron to make lenses for them, these are all problems, but at least use older DSLR lenses It is an excellent option. To mitigate this, the camera size issue favors mirrorless cameras, as the lack of a mirror assembly gives manufacturers more options in camera size. That said, there is a tendency not to make cameras that are too small and delicate, some DSLR users even like a sturdy feeling body. with the mirrorless camera we want a good grip and for the little finger not to fall off the bottom of the camera, but for my part, although I like a good sized grip, the smaller form factor of my mirrorless camera It feels good in the hand and is lighter.

Optical designers are also taking advantage of the lack of a mirror assembly, this allows them to place the lens closer to the sensor, adding some flexibility in design options. Here is my Canon R5 and a 16 millimeter F 2.8 lens. This is a great little package for street photography, for example, and I promised it. An additional tip: One thing that worries people new to mirrorless is battery life. There's a valid reason for this: because the viewfinder is electronic, which means it takes some power to keep showing you what the camera sees. Some also have sensor stabilization and require even more power.

As such, some of the first mirrorless cameras to come out had much shorter battery life than comparable DSLRs, some were downright bad. There is a standard measure of battery life called separate rating camera and imaging product association. I don't actually give that much credibility in the real world. its use is designed to provide a worst case scenario under very controlled conditions, for example the Canon R5 super rating is 490shots but I get 1500 to 2000 pictures per battery which is fine probably because I shoot in bursts but because people have heard about Battery Life Issues they are looking at the separate ratings for the first time and see ratings like four hundred or five hundred shots per battery and they get scared, but recent cameras are closing the gap.

The battery life of mirrorless cameras is increasing all the time. Some styles of photography that require tons of mirrorless exposures can come close to DSLRs because they don't need to use power to raise the mirror for each shot. My personal experience with my style of photography is that I am improving. Five to ten percent less battery life than my DSLR, so in the end the battery life may be worse than mirrorless cameras, but just use the separate ratings to compare the cameras to each other, without Compare a separate rating of a mirrorless camera with your personal experience with your DSLR.

We also offer you some quick tips to extend your battery life. Set the LCD screen and electronic viewfinder to turn off after less time, perhaps four seconds instead of eight. Turn off your G GPS Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you are not using them or enable airplane mode if you have one to put your camera into sleep mode when it is not in use and you also have the electronic viewfinder and LCD screen at maximum brightness So if you're considering

switching

to mirrorless, what should you think about? Make sure you can adapt your DSLR lenses to your mirrorless camera if you plan to use them.

Make sure a little less battery life is fine or consider getting a battery grip if this is a critical issue. Be careful the first time you look through an electronic device. The viewfinder feels a little strange, but it will probably pass over time and make sure the lenses you want in the future are available and affordable. Keep in mind that

switching

to mirrorless won't make you a better photographer per se, it won't get you out of bed. to 2am to go out and take photos of the Milky Way, it will help you find better compositions or make amazing action happen right in front of you, but it will send you home with more Guardians, it will allow you to get better exposed photos more often, It won't disturb a quiet hallway. for a recital, it will give you sharper images at low shutter speeds with the Ibis and give you a smaller form factor.

If you found this video helpful, give it a like and YouTube will show it to more people. Remember that the best camera for you is the one you have. in your hands and use and the chances of seeing a bald eagle crossing your living room are very low, go out and take some amazing photos. I know you can do it.