5 Interesting Facts about Mirrorless Camera
It is 2019 and when you plan to buy a new camera, a mirrorless camera appears to be the best choice. Why should you buy this kind of camera this year? There are 5 interesting facts about this camera that you should know to understand how great it is.
A mirrorless camera has no mirror.
This seems to be a very obvious explanation; however, if you are not very familiar with how a DSLR camera works, you may not understand why the absence of mirror matters. In an SLR (Single Lens Reflex) or DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera, a mirror is used to reflect the image to the camera’s viewfinder, which allows you to see the image that the camera captures before pressing the switch. A mirrorless camera has no mirror. It uses a digital viewfinder that reproduces the captured image digitally. Due to the absence of a mirror, this camera is more compact than a DSLR camera-a fact that will be further explained below.
A mirrorless camera has a smaller body, but it is not always more compact and more portable.
A mirrorless camera doesn’t have a mirror and all related parts, making it smaller and lighter than a DSLR camera. However, does this make the camera more compact and more portable than a DSLR camera? This is true if you are using a camera with a cropped sensor. If you use a full-frame interchangeable lens camera, which you mostly do if you plan to buy a modern mirrorless, this is not always the case.
The full-frame sensors of the camera require the use of lenses that can be as big as those used by DSLR full-frame cameras. Because you eventually have to use big and heavy lenses as well as adapters, your compact camera will no longer be considered compact and portable. In fact, the compact and lightweight design of the camera, when paired with the bulky lenses, may cause imbalance when handling the camera. If you plan to buy a mirrorless camera, you may want to have one that can be equipped with certain accessories to counterbalance the weight of the lenses.
A mirrorless camera is noiseless.
This is still related to the absence of a mirror in a mirrorless camera. When you use a DSLR camera, you will be very familiar with the sound of the flipping mirror when you are shooting a picture. Because a mirrorless camera has no mirror, this familiar sound is also absent. If you want to use a camera that is useful for discreet shooting activities, such as the one you do in a formal event, you will love this camera’s silent operation.
The digital viewfinder of a mirrorless camera provides accurate image readout.
The optical viewfinder of a DSLR camera often provides exposure readout that is vastly different from the captured image. This is still true even after you do some tinkering with the exposure meter of your camera. The digital viewfinder of a mirrorless camera does a better job in reproducing the image that is about to be captured. Due to the digital reproduction that doesn’t rely on a mirror, the image that you see in the viewfinder will be exactly the same with the image that you get after you click the shutter button. The accuracy that this camera offers, which gives it the moniker WYSIWYG camera, makes it more appealing than the mirror-based viewfinder of a DSLR camera.
A mirrorless camera generally has a shorter battery life.
Both mirrorless and DSLR cameras use the battery to power up their components, but a mirrorless camera has one extra component that needs power: its digital viewfinder. This is the reason why the battery of a DSLR camera generally lasts longer than that of its mirrorless counterpart, with the former lasts between 400 and 1000 shots and the latter between 300 and 700 shots before recharging is needed. The battery life can be extended with a spare battery or with a power grip that allows two batteries to be used simultaneously. Although this seems to be a problem, you will barely see it as a problem when you are using a mirrorless camera. How often do you shoot 300 images or more in a single photography session? The chance is that you still have much battery power left even if you do a busy photography session because you will least likely shoot that many images when using any cameras, including a mirrorless one. Besides, as mentioned above, you can either use a spare battery or a power grip to make sure that you will never encounter a battery-related problem when using your camera.
Originally published at https://smartechmoney.com on August 6, 2019.
