Home Forums Gear Photography Mirror vs Mirrorless ?

Mirrorless cameras are battery hogs. They have the benefit of having less moving parts so they don't suffer from shake as much. They are cutting edge and much more expensive.
DSLR's do have more moving parts but that can be largely overcome by secure mounting on a Monopod or tripod.
Either one is going to suffer from obsolescence from year to year. It's always been that way. Technology marches on. Both can take stunning pictures with the right person driving and using good lens'. It's hard to beat good glass and that $16K Canon lens is going to take some breathtaking pictures if you can afford it and use it properly in good light.

Look for a used Nikon D200 (or similar). It has a sealed metal body that will accept virtually every F-mount lens Nikon ever made. Start with a kit lens and go from there. Buy quality, but used, gear in excellent condition.

ML cameras are not as easy on batteries as DSLR but I routinely get 700+ photos on a single battery while photographing sporting events.

Something that seem's to seldom be mentioned. Give an average photographer a top of the line camera and he will take some really nice photo's. Give a great photographer a bottom of the line entry level and he will smoke the guy. having the latest and greatest equipment will not overcome skill!

My walk around lens on my Nikon 7000 is an 18-200 Tamron but saw one the other day I think I'd rather have. 18-300 Nikon, didn't even know they had that! I like pretty wide telephoto's, eliminates the need for a lot of lense's, and need to keep changing them. I don't really think you'll find any big advantage to what ever brand you buy. I shoot Nikons because I pretty much always have! I have a nephew that shoot's Canon and he can tell you all the advantages but I suspect he does because he always has also!

This brings up a good point--one's idea of what a "walk-around" lens is. With the D7000 crop factor that 300mm high end would be a whopping 450mm telephoto! You'd need a tripod for that. Not my idea of a walking around lens.

Really depends on your subjects. My favorite "street walk-around" lens is 85mm/1.4 @ full frame.

Take a look at what 1 minute's wife has done over the years. I believe she use's a Canon DSLR mirror camera and her photo's are great. It's not the tool, it's the mechanic! She either has a gift with a camera or has worked at it hard to get to where she is. Mirrorless or mirror? I'd definately go the older mirror as I can get one for a lot less money and lense's are everywhere. Learn to use it and you might never get the urge for a mirrorless after looking at the price tags! Comming from a guy that knows nothing about mirrorless but is perfectly happy with his DSLR!

One thing not mentioned here is that with a camera like the Sony A7 IV you really might find that you don't need all those big lenses. It is phenomenal how much you can "blow up" a photo taken with these cameras and still have razor sharp detail. They have a super-fast ability to write at 60 frames per second on HD video, so moving targets like birds flying for example, can be recorded in video and then you pick out frame by frame the best photo. Yes, they are harder on batteries, but that is what they make spares for. The biggest downfall about these cameras for me is the ridiculous degree of complication. These are not user friendly at all and you can plan on spending considerable time getting oriented to the workings of the way over-complicated device. Hope this helps someone out there.....M

Edit: I would also add that one thing which drives me crazy about expensive, so-called "high end" cameras like the Sony A7 IV is that they are not water or weatherproof at all....get caught in the rain one good time where it suffers a serious soaking or drop it in a stream or pond and it is pretty much finished. That's a lot of money to be so fragile for me.

Printing again and this time around probably won't do many small photo's. So fat the smallest one I've one is a 7x14. Mostly doing 8x16 and larger Biggest I've done is 12x24, had to buy roll paper to get there. Did some 13x19's from a point and shoot I recently got, photo's came out great! I think a guy would be well off to consider what he plans to use the camera for. Myself I'll stick to my DSLR and point and shoot. Thinking about doung a 13x39 with my DSLR. Tell you this about 13x19 photo's, they take up wall space in a hurry!

I can easily walk around with Cookie's 500 prime that is essentially an 800 mm on a Canon 70D crop body. It's heavy, but its length and weight contribute to hand held stability. Sort of like a 15 lb 45-90 Sharps versus a featherweight composite stocked 22 LR. She has a newer and much lighter 100-400 zoom, and I'm nowhere near hand held stable with that unit.

As to prints, that's where pixel count comes in. Detail gets rough if one gets below about 250 pixels per linear inch for a print.

How do you figure pixel count?

Don:


With my Windows system: right click the image or the image file name, click the "properties" option, then "details." A ton of data comes up on the source of the image including pixel counts on the x and y axes as well as the "dpi" or pixels per inch.

One can alter the "dpi" count with photo processing software to change image size without revising any of the image data itself.

I'll bring in an example shortly.

Edited:

The box below this image is just a small portion of the metadata itself from an image file called BarkPileWeasel.





We downsize images for posting, so its dimensions are 1920 x 1200 pixels which still displays well on most monitors. If it was printed it would be processed at 350 pixels per inch generating an image that was about 5.48 x 3.42 inches. Good enough for a card, but not a 19 x 12 inch wall hanger

I won't put it up, but another image on this unit is 5472 x 3648 pixels. Printed at 250 pixels per inch, that would make a great 21.8 by 14.6 inch print. Quality would be slightly better at 300 pixel per inch, but most shops will let us get by at 250. If one wants super detail, some printers are capable of 600 dots per inch.

Bit depth (24) is the number of colors available. With a 24-bit image, the bits are divided into three groupings: 8 for red, 8 for green, and 8 for blue. Combinations of those bits are used to represent other colors. A 24-bit image offers 16.7 million colors.

If one scrolls up and down through that box he will find all the metadata for each image including things like camera make, model, exposure settings, dates, times, his/her name, and perhaps GPS coordinates if one has that activated on his camera.

Posting such images to the web can be risky as many are revealing far more data about themselves than they realize. Running one's images through some other software and resaving the file may or may not alter or eliminate that metadata. That data is still attached to Cookie's images that we serve up though Postimage.org. We have no business secrets that might be revealed and have the GPS systems turned off, so we don't really worry about it.

As an example, here's the meta data for Thirtythirty's DenaliAurora image in the Photo Association thread.

Don't think I'm revealing any secrets here, as we're just showing his camera settings, but we do put out more about ourselves than one thinks.

One might note too, that there is an option at the bottom of the Details box to remove portions of the meta data. This was a big deal a couple years back when folks were image posting nuts. Few realized they were putting names and the precise locations of their kid's cutsie images out for all to see or exploit.

That metadata is not available when images are displayed via the forum because most websites revise or downsize images for display or rapid transmission. Again, however, that data may be available if one downloads the file from the hosting site.

Probably clear as mud and more than one wants to know.

Have a good one,

Do you own a mirrorless? My experience does not translate. Used a Canon R5 for the past few years shooting football games and I can easily shoot an entire game with one battery while getting 500+ shots. Canon 5D IV used prior and while it could get a few more shots/battery, I certainly wouldn't call mirrorless a battery hogs.

Something about mirorless and mirror people might not understand. They will both take picture's!

I had an 18-140 on my old D5000, my son has it now. Presently I have an 18-200 Tamron on a D 7000 that works great. Also have a 55-300 Nikon lense and 170-500 Sigma. Seldom use the 55-300 and even less the 170-500. For myself, getting something like an 18-200 makes mote sense than a 70-210, Have it and haven't used it in years. Has a lot better wide angle mm and pretty much equal on the long end. Ran into a guy a while back had an 18-300 Nikon. Migt be a good choice as it still has the 18mm wide end and adds almost 100mm to the long end and everything inbetween. Didn't pay much attention to how big it was. My 18-200 Tamron is smaall and light and does a good job.

Got this photo with 18-200 Tamron.

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You might want to think about a Point and shoot camera, so have very long lense's on them. My most used camera is a Panosonic ZA 100 I got recently. In a holster on my belt and goes every where with my. Lense is 25-250mm.

Photo from my Panosonic.


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I doubt there is any pros or cons to either. People just seem to want to chase perfection and as long as some manufacturer convinces you that this new strain will get you closer it will become popular. I have seen a lot of film photo's from very advanced armature's and pros years ago and if that was as good as I could get I'd have no complaint. The BS on mirrorless cameras is actually that. BS to get you to spend more money!

I had an F2.8 70-200 lens on my Canon EOS 5D. Fantastic lens....top shelf. But for wildlife, I needed more than 200mm. I traded it off for their newest 100-400 lens and that was a game changer for me.

I'm sticking with mirror for the foreseeable future.

Hint: Go to Ken Rockwell's website for an honest review of all the cameras and lenses. Good reading!

www.kenrockwell.com

Those 100-400 Canons are good lenses. Cookie has both the older and a newer version and they are her bread n butter units. As far as picture quality goes, they seem to be optically identical. Pretty handy, but on a crop body one often has too much glass if things come in close.