THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO… Mirrorless cameras

The days of chunky and clunky DSLRs are behind us – the best innovations in the camera market are now in the mirrorless sector. Time to take your snaps to the next level

- Amy Davies

For several decades, when you wanted a ‘serious’ or ‘proper’ camera, there was one place to turn: the SLR (single-lens reflex), followed closely by the DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) when the market turned away from analogue and towards digital.

In 2009, things started to change when the first ‘mirrorless’ camera came along in the shape of the Panasonic G1. In the intervening 10-and-a-bit years, the camera market became almost unrecognisable compared to what it once was. Just to be clear – although technically any camera without a mirror could be classed as ‘mirrorless’ (including phones and compact cameras), this name generally refers to interchangeable lens cameras.

While DSLRs still very much do exist and make up the bulk of the market, the future is almost definitely headed towards a complete domination by devices that do away with traditional camera onstruction. If you take a look at the new models that have entered the market in 2019 and 2020, just a handful are DSLRs – the overwhelming majority went down the mirrorless route.

As the name implies, the main difference between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras is the lack of a mirror. With a DSLR, a physical mirror reflects the image up to an optical viewfinder. When you take a picture, this mirror flips up out of the way to allow light to hit the camera’s sensor. In a mirrorless camera, the sensor is always exposed to light and displays an image via something known as Live View, displayed either on the camera’s rear screen or through an electronic viewfinder.

THE MERITS OF MIRRORLESS