Hi All,

So things have moved on in the camera world since this hot spud thrown in LOL

But now we see most companies fully in the mirrorless universe.

So can we say now that the long standing dSLR design is for the history pile in 2021??

Have alot of you dSLR shooters switched to mirrorless system?

Myself I never shot dSLR, I either had bridge camera or now I using A77 SLT which also does not

use OVF like mirrorless.

I do shoot SLR because I have two workhorse film cameras.

Anyway Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you keeping safe and well.

Let hope quickly we can have regular lives in 2021

 

That question has been asked for a couple of years now. I don’t think there will be many (if any) new ones coming to market. The two barriers to mirrorless - AF speed and electronic viewfinder performance are overturned - shorter battery life can be lived with. I use mirrorless (Fuji) alongside DSLRs (Canon) and when the DSLRs give up I’ll go Canon mirrorless - be a couple of few yet as a camera should have at least 10 years use in my view.

 

I shoot DSLR and mirrorless, because I have two DSLRs and two mirrorless cameras.

I think Nikon has one more flagship DSLR in them, but I doubt Canon do.

DSLRs will be around for years (because many of them will last 10+ years and are solid workhorses).

I can't afford anything as good as my 7d2 again (bought it with redundancy money 5ish years ago) until the current gen of mirrorless are going fourth-hand so I'll be shooting DSLRs for a long time to come.

 

This sort of discussion always deteriorates into people writing down their prejudices. At the end of the day, the businesses that build cameras will do what keeps them profitable and therefor in business. Those businesses that cannot or will not supply what enough people will pay for will go away.

 

No, 2020 isn't/wasn't the last year of the DSLR.

I can say that categorically because, as far as I know, neither Nikon nor Canon has ceased production of any of their bodies. We will probably see the entry level DSLRs replaced by entry level mirrorless cameras over the next year or so followed by the higher priced models. It is likely that the D6 and EOS 1 DX III will remain available remain in production for some time yet and the top of the range Nikon Z model has yet to appear, officially at least.

Even when all the current DSLR bodies have ceased production there will remain an enormous number of bodies and lenses on the used market.

It should be remembered that Nikon only discontinued the F6 (the last film SLR) relatively recently and there are plenty of film SLRs available used. Don't forget that both Nikon and Canon film bodies use the same lenses as their DSLR cousins (with exceptions).

What about Pentax then? In this discussion Pentax is irrelevant, they may produce SLRs but their presence or absence isn't having any effect on the mass market.

 

There will be quite a number of DSLR cameras sold for some while yet.
Though probably many are assembled from pre-produced stock parts, that are no longer in production.
It is probably no longer worth replacing worn tooling as sales figures drop.
The last models to come to and end, are usually the top of the range, that are only produced in relatively small numbers anyway.

The DSLR is not so much dying as fading away.

 

My 15 year old Minolta 5D still works, so does my Sony A200, what's with the 10 year life quoted above, not broke why change, I don't want more pixels, they just take up more disc space, I've got a video camera. Maybe I should sign myself Luddite?

 

Not for me

Since the start 2020 I had two cameras - one ds!r and one mirrorless - Sometime in the spring I wanted to improve my photcoverage so I bought a mint 7D to fill a gap.. I have no plans to buy anything else. Yes I could afford any camera on the market.

 

Canon & Nikon (for example) will always want to sell entry level cameras at an entry level price. On WEX website entry level Canon & Nikon dSLR's are both approx £420 with kit lens.

The cheapest Canon mirrorless is the M50 which is £649 with lens. The cheapest Nikon is the Z50 at £899 with lens.

I think that only when manufacture can sell mirrorless cameras at entry level prices will dSLR cease to be made.

 

I've got some DSLRs and some mirrorless (MFT) cameras, and have no intention of selling off the DSLRs yet. In my experience they focus faster on moving targets and currently if I did have to go down to one system, mirrorless would go

 

That’s not really the issue. The best of mirrorless are now on par with the best of DSLRs and less complex mechanically. The question is whether people at the top of the market move over when their DSLRs need replacing, that’s where the profit lies. There are people who go through several, say, 1DX cameras, a year. Once this echelon has shown commitment to move then the rest will surely follow but it will take a decade.

 

I have said before that there are photographers who want an "always on" viewfinder and mirrorless cameras can't compete with SLRs in that arena. The mechanical simplicity of the mirrorless camera is great for the manufacturer but generally of no consequence to the end user, the mechanical parts of modern cameras being pretty robust.

Yes, when the heavy users switch to mirrorless the DSLR will be on its way out of manufacture, but actually the manufacturers have another way of forcing a switch; stop making the batteries for DSLRs. That isn't how Nikon are thinking because the Z6 and Z7 series cameras use a variation of the battery used in some of their DSLRs and the rumoured Z8/9 appears to use a version of the EN-EL18 that is in the D4, D5 and D6. I can't speak for Canon in this respect. It also appears that the Z8/9 will cost about the same as a D6.

I don't think either Nikon or Canon care whether they sell an SLR or Mirrorless camera/lens just as long as they make a profit on doing so. Being controversial, I think the only people who want to see the demise of the DSLR are a small minority of mirrorless users who want assurance that they have made the right decision and retailers who want the income from selling a completely new system to each customer who switches.

There was a reason why the SLR was the definitive film camera but that doesn't mean it has to have the same place in digital photography. That it has taken nearly 20 years for Nikon and Canon to produce top end mirrorless cameras should tell us something and what it tells us is that Sony, Panasonic and others have reached the point where they are competing for the top end professional market. A market that Nikon and Canon had pretty much cornered and want to hold on to. There really is no reason why SLR cameras should die out as long as there is a market for them. Those with vested interests may well think that it is to everybody's benefit to switch to mirrorless, in truth, if you are happy using an SLR there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't carry on happily using it/them.

 

I will skip the mirrorless completely
I have easily enough dslr’s and lenses to see my life out
If and when the weight becomes a issue
I will a) no longer care about pictures or b) use a phone - which by then will be light years from where we currently are

Either way will not go mirrorless

 

And a phone isn't mirrorless?

 

I get quite a good reflection in mine when it's off.

 

The wake-up time is now very quick so it isn't a particular problem beyond battery drain. I agree that with my first mirrorless it drove my crazy because when the camera timed out while looking through the finder it took ages to come back. It would be better if the partition of task between view-finder and LCD were more like a DSLR with LCD for menu and review, viewfinder for taking. Maybe the newest ones allow this.

I spent a frustrated 5 mins the other day wondering why my new X100V had stopped working. I'd left the lens cap on. That's a downside of optical range-finder viewfinders I'd forgotten about.

 

That is a very personal thing, I really don't want a viewfinder that can blank, however briefly. Photographing birds, particularly fast moving ones, requires looking through the lens continuously. I certainly wouldn't be happy at the possibility that keeping an EVF alive might prevent there being sufficient power to capture images. I have tried looking at birds on my Nikon 1J5, no finder, and it just doesn't work for me. So, sorry but until there is a way to have a continuously available viewfinder I will be sticking with my SLRs.

 

I’ll let you know in a couple of years then. Unless something breaks my first DSLR for replacement will be my 1Div which I use for birding and I’ll probably be looking at the second generation R5 to replace it with. I’ve not seen any reviews of birding with Canon or Fuji mirrorless though Olympus have been pushing themselves in that direction.

 

Your post made me laugh
- I’m looking for a mint 1Div. Fed up with the 7d lousy AF.
But the whole mirrorless movement is odd to me. If going mirrorless meant it was suddenly possible to have a all-in-one 15-500mm f2.8 I could imagine switching - BUT what is the gain..?
My analogy is going from DVD to Blu Ray....I don’t know anyone who still buys either these days.
Doesn’t seem too long ago that camera sales were down and manufacturers were constantly struggling to sell new cameras. They needed something to revitalise a stagnant market...hmmm ?
Also remember quite a few people I know who replaced their entire DVD library with Blu Ray. I wonder if they still watch them?

 

The two advantages of mirrorless (and EVF) are exposure preview and expanded view. To take as an example of the latter - my 1Div is "better" than my 5Ds for birding because the x1.3 crop gives me viewfinder magnification and that is the determining factor when focusing on very small things. With an ELV I can magnify the view at will.

The disadvantages have been the ELV quality, time-response and as Geoff says the viewfinder is not "free" - it eats a lot of battery if set permanently on and if you have power saving on then it can blank. The improvement in ELVs the last 3/4 years has been enormous and on-sensor AF has also now probably overtaken SLR accuracy because there is just one focus plane equal to the taking plane.

The pitch Olympus make is centred on the small sensor size - so that they can halve the actual focal length of a lens. So a 400 mm lens has the effective field of view of an 800 mm lens on full frame. They've just brought out a something to 400 zoom with a built in x1.4 teleconverter which is "longer" than anything you could reasonably carry for full-frame DSLR.

That said Canon have used the fact that metering systems on mirrorless can operate at very low light levels - they have affordable 600 and 800 mm F11 prime lenses for their R system. These could be good for birding. Because the ELV brightness is user set there is no problem seeing through an F11 lens and because it is slow it is comparatively light. I use a 500 F4 with my 1Div and, because I've not gone out birding for a year now, I probably won't be able to hand-hold it straight away. It takes strength and technique that benefits from at least weekly use.