I’m a big fan of the DSLR – it turned the amazing SLR (Single-lens-reflex) camera into a digital camera, so that I could take as many photos as I want, but without the hassle of film. And for me, the optical viewfinder, through-the-lens (TTL) view is what photography is all about. Seeing the world, as your eye sees it rather than as a digital sensor sees it.
If you’ve recently got into photography, then the chances are you might have skipped the DSLR entirely. With mirrorless cameras you get an accurate through-the-lens (TTL) view, but represented on a tiny screen in your electronic viewfinder, which itself is a digital view of the scene through the lens. So, it’s being processed by the camera, and then again by a digital screen, before you actually see it.
And the truth is, that your eye can capture more dynamic range than almost every camera available. Try this out for yourself, look at the scene in front of you, imagine a window with daylight outside, and inside your room, and most likely you can easily see both the bright outdoors and the indoors perfectly well. Now point a camera at both scenes and see what exposure comes up. For me it’s:
- Outdoors: ISO200, f/10, 1/200s
- Inside: ISO200, f/3.5, 1/15s
Indoors is clearly much darker, and needs a much slower exposure, or a higher ISO speed. And this ability to see both with your own eyes is what makes the DSLR so unique, it doesn’t limit your ability to see a huge dynamic range. We can talk incomprehensible numbers as much as we like, but this is what I can clearly see with my eyes, no electronic viewfinder or screen can show those at the same time.
In comparison a mirrorless camera (or compact camera, or phone) without an optical viewfinder limits your view to what the camera can cope with. And this isn’t reality.
You may see modern cameras say they can offer up to 15 stops of dynamic range, which to many may sound a lot (especially if you’ve come from the age of film and film scanners), but in comparison estimates online* says the human eye can see 20-24 stops of dynamic range (others put this at 34-50 stops). *Everything on the internet is true, right?
Knowing this, why would you want to limit yourself to a mirrorless camera, when the DSLR (and other cameras with an optical viewfinder), let you see the real world. And it’s once we understand the real world, and the range of light on offer, that we can truly learn how to master photography.
Related reading
- Forget ISO, here’s why noise doesn’t really matter anymore
- Have we already reached ‘peak camera’ technology?
- Are DSLRs really STILL better than mirrorless cameras?
- Is the death of the DSLR the biggest market misstep of the 21st Century?
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: [email protected]
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