Why mirrorless cameras are taking over

[Music] it's been an exciting few years for cameras a few major shakeups have changed the landscape of professional photography and we the consumers get to reap the benefits the biggest shift has been the rise of the high-end mirrorless camera and particularly fantastic new cameras from brands like Sony and Fuji this past year Sony became the biggest seller of full-frame cameras entirely on the strength of its mirrorless designs this spurred Canon and Nikon to jump into the mirrorless ring with their Z and e OS r lines launching this last fall mirrorless cameras have become a big part of the market but they haven't replaced SLRs the camera style that's been king for nearly a hundred years so what exactly makes a camera mirrorless and why would you pick one style over another [Music] whether you're just looking to buy a new camera or curious about how we got here hopefully this will explain the current state of cameras we're gonna walk through some the biggest differences between these two types of cameras including how they focus how you view an image stabilization body and design and what lenses you can use there's a lot to learn but stick with us first off let's define some terms SLR stands for single lens reflex and the reflex here has to do with reflections in a reflex camera light from the lens is reflected off a mirror into the viewfinder an early design the twin-lens reflex invented in the 1880s and popularized by Rolleiflex in 1927 had a dedicated lens for the viewfinder and a second lens that was actually used to take the picture the challenge with these cameras along with other styles like rangefinder and point-and-shoot film cameras is that because your viewfinder is offset from the lens what you see doesn't exactly line up what the camera sees the framing of your photos will be a little bit different than how they looked through the viewfinder SLRs fixed this by linking the viewfinder directly to the lens in an SLR light enters the lens bounces off a mirror and then into a prism that redirects the light into your eye because of this what you see will line up exactly with the photo you're taking but this introduces its own challenges because now there's a great big mirror in the way behind the lens and to deal with this in an SLR a spring flips the mirror upwards and out of the way before the shutter triggers and records the photo and then snaps the mirror back into place these mechanisms have to move extremely quickly and be robust enough to survive hundreds of thousands of photos DSLRs have a lot of mechanical complexity but they work well enough that as cameras switched from film to digital sensors the mir system survived nearly unchanged still having a mirror does have a few drawbacks because the mirror has to get out of your way in an SLR your image through the viewfinder momentarily goes black whenever you press the shutter it can also be noisy and the mirror assembly itself is fairly bulky taking up a lot of space and making SLR is larger than many other styles of cameras by contrast a mirrorless camera well it doesn't have a mirror light passes through the lens and falls directly onto the sensor technically digital pointless shoots going back to cameras from Kodak Rico and Epson in the 90s were mirrorless as our pocket cameras like the Nikon cool picks or sony cybershot these days however when someone refers to a mirrorless camera they usually mean a mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera one result of not having a mirror is that you can't look directly through the lens you have to rely on digital view finders this is essentially a video preview from the sensor displayed on screen now these have gotten a lot better but they used to be pretty low res or have bad delay between the real world and what's on your screen because your viewfinder is a so-called live view straight from the sensor you see what the camera sees so you don't need to worry that your view will be different from the final shot this ends up being pretty similar to how dslr's work autofocus is a different story though [Music] how autofocus works is one of the biggest differences between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras in the past good autofocus has actually relied on having a mirror and DSLRs ability to focus on quick moving objects is pretty incredible it's the reason that sports photographers have been willing to pay more than $6,000 for a Nikon d-4s or Canon 1dx these cameras usually had two auto focus systems contrast detect which is available on most cameras and phase detect which enabled that super quick focus on moving subjects face detect autofocus actually relies on a second smaller mirror reflecting some of the light down into a dedicated autofocus sensor at the bottom of the camera crucially a phase detector system tells the camera which direction to focus closer are farther away and it's also pretty good at tracking foreground objects however it because the autofocus assembly is separate from the sensor a DSLR it never sees what it's focusing on so it can't adapt to different scenes also if the mirrors flipped up say while using live view or recording the movie the camera can't reflect light onto that focus sensor and instead has to rely on a second system this is the contrast detect autofocus which analyzes the image from the sensor itself the camera then moves folk backwards and forwards and calculates which direction yields higher contrast which means a sharper image it'll keep focusing one direction until the image starts to D focus and then reverse until it settles on the highest contrast image this is actually potentially more accurate than phase detect because it's analyzing the actual image on the sensor itself but it's much slower and it can lead to a distracting hunting behavior where the focus wobbles in and out because they rely on contrast detect focus when the mirror is flipped up most DSLRs have poor autofocus when shooting video it tends to be slow and the constant hunting in and out of focus can ruin shots so what about mirrorless cameras well without a mirror or dedicated focus sensor early mirrorless models were stuck with that same slow contrast detect auto focus around 2010 though the first so-called hybrid autofocus systems were appearing starting with the Fujifilm F 300 X are a compact point-and-shoot these used a form of phase detect autofocus built into the sensor itself this quickly spread to Fugees higher and X line of mirrorless cameras in a similar system was adopted by Sony for its alpha cameras in 2013 these on the sensor phase detect autofocus systems are usually slower and less accurate than the dedicated sensors in the DSLR but they use a really clever trick in a hybrid system the bulk of the focusing is still done with contrast but it uses the phase detector system to know which direction to focus eliminating that back and forth hunting behavior these systems can also be used when shooting video and these days high-end mirrorless cameras can focus as well if not better than most DSLRs the search and people using mirrorless and DSLR cameras for video has actually led to an autofocus revolution because of their big sensors and inexpensive lenses starting with canons 5d mark ii DSLRs were more and more becoming tools for video as well as photography but slow contrast detect autofocus meant video producers generally had to rely on manual focus is frustrated a lot of people and as DSLR video got popular companies saw an opening and developed new focus systems that worked around past limitations Canon actually ditched contrast focused entirely and developed a system called dual pixel autofocus which premiered on the 70d DSLR and essentially turns every pixel into a tiny phase detect sensor it's now using that same system on its iOS our mirrorless cameras on the flip side Panasonic created a system called depth from the focus for its gh4 a mirrorless camera that quickly became popular with video producers depth from D focus is a purely contrast based system and uses stored data of how various lenses distort light to know which direction to focus this system is blazingly fast though it only really works with Panasonic's own lenses still Panasonic claims its g9 mirrorless can use the system to lock focus quicker than any other camera hybrid autofocus will really took off around 2013 though with Sony's a7 series and it's had an interesting side benefit computation based focused mode remember DSLR phase detect systems analyze the character of incoming light but not the content the camera can't actually see what it's focusing on on sensor systems like hyper autofocus can use processing to interpret what's actually in the scene enabling things like eye tracking or face detect autofocus these are potentially game-changing developments that can greatly improve focus accuracy after decades of cameras relying on two well-established systems we are suddenly at a point where brands are experimenting with new and potentially revolutionary ways to improve autofocus and mirrorless cameras are leading the way there's one other area we're seeing mer less cameras differentiate themselves from DSLRs and that's stabilization mirrorless cameras are starting to make in-body stabilization the default for photography and video now this is a system where the sensor actually shifts and moves to compensate for vibration yielding sharper photos and smoother video lens based stabilization where the individual glass elements of a lens are shifted has been around since night on introduced it in 1994 and it is quite good but it has drawbacks mostly it's expensive you essentially pay for it with each lens you buy in body stabilization was actually possible with traditional DSLRs but Canon and Nikon nixed it in favor of lens stabilization they claimed this was because long focal lengths can't be easily stabilized in body and long focal lengths are actually where shake and vibration matter most but it's probably also because you can't actually see in-body stabilization in a DSLR if you're looking at a mirror not the sensor you can't actually perceive sensor stabilization as opposed to lens stabilization which is instantly apparent once you turn it on it's telling that Nikon's first mirrorless cameras the z 6 and z 7 were also there first with in-body stabilization there are pros and cons to each system for example in body does usually drain more battery life and lens based can be surprisingly noisy but the rise of mirrorless cameras have made in-body stabilization common especially on newer cameras from Sony Panasonic Nikon and Olympus the last big difference between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras is in their actual shape by ditching the mirror most mirrorless cameras are much thinner and this places the back of the lens closer to the sensor this is called the flange distance and in traditional cameras it was around 45 millimeters for mirrorless cameras it's usually less than half that at 15 to 20 millimeters this has a few advantages included for adapted lenses plenty of people for example use older Canon or Nikon lenses on Sony cameras Sony's amount has a flange distance of 18 millimeters so you just have to use an adapter 26 millimeters thick to replicate the 44 millimeter distance of canons EF mount optically that shorter flange is useful too it allows for simplified lens designs and makes compact or brighter wide-angle lenses especially easier to build wide-angle lenses are a particular challenge for DSLR cameras because many wide-angle designs naturally want to focus very close to the back of the lens most DSLR wide-angle lenses have to incorporate additional large and heavy glass elements that shift the focal point back far enough for it to actually hit the sensor this can make for a lens that is surprisingly large and heavy for contrast nikon DSLR based 16 to 35 millimeter f/4 lens is 680 grams while its new mirrorless based 14 to 30 millimeter f/4 is almost 200 grams lighter despite being a wider angle lens bottom line mirrorless gear will tend to be lighter though smaller camera bodies can also mean less fiscal buttons and be less comfortable for big hands [Music] in terms of image quality it's hard to pick between mirrorless against alarm Sony's Merrill is cameras make fantastic images but most people chalk that up to their sensor design not anything innate about being mirrorless testing lab DxO mark also routinely rates Nikon DSLRs as producing some of the technically best images around but when you get out of the lab and into the real world lots of people prefer the look of canons 5d DSLRs mirrorless is a big category it spans small sensor cameras like the Panasonic th5 and Fuji XT 3 up to the full frame like Sony a7r 3 for now at least image quality and meeting more importantly image character varies more between the brands than it does between the SLRs and mirrorless cameras so if you want to pick a new camera should you pick a DSLR or mirrorless well here's what it boils down to DSLRs do still have a few advantages they start up incredibly quickly you flick the switch and they're on and you're ready to film mirrorless have improved a lot in this regard most still take 2 or 3 seconds to boot up and that is enough time to miss a critical shot mirrorless cameras also generally have far worse battery life getting half or even a quarter as many shots as a DSLR on a charge because DSLRs are so established the used space is also huge and they can be found for relatively cheap you can pick up a 60 or D 600 for less than $1000 and still take great photos same goes for lenses where the used market is vast and relatively affordable DSLR designs have also been refined for more than 20 years and especially at the higher end they earn a well-deserved reputation for being incredibly reliable and durable mirrorless cameras may be as well built but we just don't have the track record yet to be sure but there are advantages to the mirrorless design as well well they can end up being as bulky as a DSLR once you factor in adapters and lenses if you buy the right equipment you can build out a lightweight kit that will still take amazing photos the option for adaptors also opens up that used market to mirrorless cameras as well sure with an adaptive lens you may have to live without autofocus or sacrifice a few cutting-edge features but it means you potentially have access to vintage lenses across the different brands and because they're designed around live view mirrorless cameras are almost universally more suited to video which well I realize I'm a video producer saying this but it is becoming a more and more important factor in selecting a camera many brands are now in fact making to high-end mirrorless models one focused on photography like Sony's a7 are Panasonic's g9 and Nikon c7 and another model focused on video in this case the sony a7s panasonic gh4 and nikon z6 in almost every case if video is what you care about high-end mirrorless models come with more features and better quality than DSLRs mirrorless cameras also represent a more computational way to approach photography DSLR certainly have processors in them but they mostly interpret an image in terms of optics and physics mirrorless cameras because the system can actually read and analyze the preview image on the sensor can do things like face recognition or advanced metering and exposure control Sony's eye tracking and Panasonic's depth from D focus are great examples of how improved processing and add capabilities that would not have been previously possible with this new approach there's also the potential for new features to be added via firmware patches Panasonic's focus algorithm has in fact noticeably improved over no less than four firmware updates we're seeing merliss cameras move towards being more like tiny computers with lenses attached Sony's cameras even run a version of Linux there are potential risks here including bugs and glitches and all of that but there are big upsides to the SLRs aren't going anywhere for now but with the rise of mirrorless we are seeing cameras improve at a rate that would have been hard to imagine if everyone was still stuck with a meal [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Engadget

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Keywords: engadget, technology, consumer tech, gadgets, science, gear, tech, autofocus, bestcameras2019, cameras, canon, nikon, sony, stabilization, video, a7, a7s, gh5, gh6, panasonic, mirrorless, dslr, best for video, best for photography, still photography, switching to video, fuji, fujifilm, s1, panasonic s1, a6400, z7 eos r, eos rp, xt-3, a7r, a7iii, a7riii, sr1, z6, gh4, a7siv

Id: p5PvHlk3yig

Length: 17min 16sec (1036 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2019