Sunday, August 4, 2019

Are you Switching to a Mirrorless Camera?

With the increase in popularity of the smaller, more portable Mirrorless Four Thirds cameras I’m curious to see where you stand on this discussion. Personally I’m ready to jump on and get myself an Olympus OM-D EM-5, only thing holding me back as of now is justifying the cost of having a second camera.
I’m in the “I’m not ditching my full sized DSLR just yet” camp as I still use it for teaching and doing portraits. However the more travelling and photography tours I do, the more appealing the Olympus becomes. One of the guys on my Cuba tour had one and it took great images, and video as well! I was really impressed.
We could have this debate all day but some of the pros and cons generally tossed about include:

PROS of Mirrorless cameras (as understood by myself who does not own one yet):

small and lightweight (that’s a given)
you can pack more lenses in a small bag for travel
less intimidating to people you photograph, especially when doing street photography
ability to accept and use adaptors to fit just about any lens, including those from your DSLR
the sensors in many of them rival DSLR APS-C sensors, and in the case of the Sony A7R they might even have the edge

CONS of Mirrorless cameras (as understood by myself who does not own one yet):

they are some that are less expensive than the full sized DSLRs, but in some cases they are more expensive. You pay for compactness
they CAN be slower to focus, so shooting moving subjects is more challenging
the electronic viewfinder – this is a bane of many DSLR owners who are used to seeing through an optical one
because of the point above, they can be battery hogs