Tog-Talk
Photographers in conversation: Essential guidance for new photographers on technique and artistic growth. That’s what ‘Tog Talk’ is all about—bringing photographers together to share insights and elevate their craft.
Tog-Talk is the home of UK professional photographer, Kevin Ahronson (Founder of Hampshire School of Photography). Every two weeks he is joined by one of his ex-students (now turned professional photographer) Kelly Perrin, where they'll dive deep into topics that matter to beginners, from mastering your camera settings to developing your unique style.
On alternating weeks, Kevin will dedicate the episode to answering listener questions, providing personalised advice to help you overcome challenges and grow as a photographer. Whether you’re struggling with exposure, landscape photography, street photography, photographing people, portraits and families, macro photography, flash photography, learning about editing with Photoshop or Lightroom, seeking composition tips, or exploring creative ideas, Tog Talk is your go-to resource for learning and inspiration.
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Tog-Talk
Ep.38: Is There Still a Place for DSLRs?
Show Notes for Tog Talk – Episode: DSLR vs Mirrorless Cameras
In this episode of Tog Talk, Kelly and Kevin delve into the world of camera evolution, discussing the ever-popular debate: DSLR versus mirrorless cameras. With an autumn chill in the air, they warmly welcome listeners into a candid and humorous conversation that balances technical insight with playful banter.
The duo begins by exploring the functional differences between DSLR and mirrorless cameras. Kevin outlines how DSLRs use a traditional mirror system to reflect light through the viewfinder, providing a direct view through the lens. Mirrorless cameras, however, rely on electronic viewfinders (EVF) to preview the image, enabling users to see exposure changes in real time. For professionals and beginners alike, this feature can significantly reduce the need for ‘chimping’—the habit of constantly checking the back of the camera for correct exposure.
They discuss the ergonomic and practical benefits of mirrorless cameras, particularly for long shooting sessions, as Kevin shares how switching to lighter Fuji mirrorless cameras transformed his wedding photography experience. Additionally, Kelly reflects on the frustrations of manual exposure adjustments and how mirrorless technology might have saved her time on recent headshots and outdoor group sessions.
Listeners will also learn about the impact of mirrorless technology on low-light performance, the expanded focusing capabilities, and the extensive range of high-quality lenses now available. Kevin offers invaluable advice to those new to photography, recommending that beginners start with affordable DSLRs before moving to the more complex mirrorless systems.
Through laughs, anecdotes, and practical insights, Kelly and Kevin bring clarity to a complex topic, helping photographers make informed choices about their gear. Tune in for a blend of expertise, relatable experiences, and a dose of nostalgia for DSLRs, as Tog Talk celebrates the art and tech of photography.
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It's raining, it's autumn, it's a little bit chilly, but Kelly and Kevin are back together for another Chalk Chalk.
Speaker 2:I'm just mostly happy that my name came first.
Speaker 1:That's only because I'm so old I couldn't remember mine. Hi, my name is Kevin Aronson from Hampshire School of Photography, and welcome to Tog Talk 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. All engines running Liftoff. We have a liftoff. Welcome back Kelly.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me back. Does anyone call?
Speaker 1:you Kel for short.
Speaker 2:Yes, but only my close friends.
Speaker 1:So it's not me.
Speaker 2:Only my close friends, and then my sisters call me Kel Bell.
Speaker 1:Kel Bell.
Speaker 2:Kel Bell yeah.
Speaker 1:As in, like something that hangs around the neck of a mookel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very good. My nan used to call me Clogsy or Kelloggs.
Speaker 1:I had a nickname.
Speaker 2:Do we want to know?
Speaker 1:So my nickname I'm just going to turn my headphones up because I can't really hear myself that well, let's just do it a little bit louder. There we go. Good, jolly, nice. And I have got such a terribly, terribly nice voice, don't you now Beautiful, anyway, so my nickname, which lasted through infant school and junior school and secondary school, airy, airy, air, airy for aaronson.
Speaker 2:No one called me kevin or aaronson, it was airy, I was always airy I, so my initial thought there was you know, like airhead, like you've got nothing up there as in no brain do know, I forgot about your surname.
Speaker 1:We worked together so well, or we did up until today.
Speaker 2:Yes, you can't call me Kel and you have no brain.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, that sounds about powerful. Of course You've been talking to my wife, haven't you?
Speaker 2:I actually I don't like Kel, I don't like Kelly, if I'm honest. No.
Speaker 1:But I always wanted to be a Dave Dave yeah Right, Dave. Yeah Well, Dave was cool back in my day, but it's not cool these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted to be Jessica. And then I named my child Jessica. You look like a Jessica, yeah.
Speaker 1:There was a period where I wanted to be. This is probably my late teens, early twenties. I wanted to be a goth. I thought you were going to say a girl. That's a completely different podcast. Don't get me on that one, otherwise we'll be taken off air.
Speaker 2:Anyway, welcome back. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed the last session so much. Yes, it was really good it was. And my last solo was answering a question about pushing. I assume you listened to it, because you listened to all of them. It was about is it better to push up your ISO on a camera or is it better to shoot it at a lower ISO and a bit dark and then push it up in post? And at the end I alluded to the fact that our next session was going to be at something which looked at JPEG versus RAW. So by the time people listened to this. Of course, that's all old history, but it was a good subject and I got some great feedback.
Speaker 1:Oh, good yeah not on the bit we did together. On my bit? Well, obviously, obviously yeah, so hit me babe.
Speaker 2:Would you like to know what we're talking about today?
Speaker 1:Oh, go on, do tell, do tell. I'm absolutely aghast with anticipation.
Speaker 2:Anticipation, so this is a subject that I know nothing about.
Speaker 1:Photography.
Speaker 2:Photography in general, just wing it. I've always avoided this conversation and, like many, many other photographers that I've spoken to, especially those that fall into the dyslexic category because the information just doesn't seem to stick. So we're going to see if we can discuss this in a way that we are going to remember it. So today, kevin, we are talking about DSLR versus mirrorless.
Speaker 1:DSLR versus mirrorless.
Speaker 2:So start us off, Kevin, Talk to me, Tell me what's the difference.
Speaker 1:Well, it costs more, loads more. Oh, it's a great, I mean. And the fact is, of course, that nearly every camera manufacturer now has stopped producing DSLRs. So, yeah, dslrs and everyone's gone. Mirrorless, and the debate between the two is a decade old, it's no longer new. But what I think is new is that question now that mirrorless have taken the hold, now that all the major manufacturers produce mirrorless and no DSLRs at all, what's the point of DSLRs even being used? I mean, why are people still using them? Because they are there. Probably are still more DSLRs being used than mirrorless, and I've been using mirrorless probably since about 2011, something like that and DSLRs I use them side by side and I was an advocate for both and I still am.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm going to just stop you. Talk to me. What is the functional difference between the two? Break it down for anybody who literally didn't know that there were two separate types of camera.
Speaker 1:Okay, I need to give just a little bit of history to understand how these guys came along. Back in the day, I mean for decades, both with film and then in the early days of digital, the market was dominated by Canon and Nikon. All the other manufacturers and there were more then than there are now could not compete and they would bring out some cracking cameras. But apart from Olympus, perhaps during the days of film with their little OM series with David Bailey giving them a bit of publicity, really it was just Canon and Nikon all the way through. And when we went over to digital, canon and Nikon were leading the field by such a huge majority that all the other manufacturers, really they were throwing money down the drain, even making stuff. And so when digital came along, there was pressure from those other manufacturers to move into DSLRs, and many of them did, but they just could not get a foothold because Canon and Nikon had, you know, traditionally they were the big players, they were the market leaders, they had the innovation, they had the money, they had the followers, the fan base, the huge lens, huge, huge collection of lenses from the widest to the longest and everything between and all the zooms. And if you were an independent manufacturer and you wanted to get into digital and decided to make a DSLR. You pretty much knew you were going to throw away money. So there was a determination OK, well, we know we can't beat them at their own game, let's find an alternative. So those early manufacturers were Panasonic, olympus, fuji and Sony and they started producing cameras which didn't have the lens sorry, didn't have the mirror in.
Speaker 1:Now, in case anyone's listening and doesn't know, a DSLR is a digital single lens reflex and it works by having a little mirror in front of the, actually behind the lens. So the light comes in, hits the mirror, the mirror bounces the light up into the viewfinder and you can see what the lens sees. And the minute you press the button to take the picture, that mirror pops up out of sight and the light, instead of going up, take the picture. That mirror pops up out of sight and the light, instead of going up through the viewfinder, goes to the sensor and the picture's taken. Mirrorless doesn't have that mirror. Instead, the light goes through the lens and straight onto the sensor and to view the picture there's a tiny, minutely small electronic. It's like a tiny computer screen inside your viewfinder. So when you look through the viewfinder of a mirrorless camera, you're not actually looking out through the lens. You're looking at a tiny tv screen, tiny computer screen. It's electronic, an electronic viewfinder. They call electronic An electronic viewfinder. They call it EVF electronic viewfinder. So you're looking at the EVF and the DSLR user is looking at real, live imagery Without any electronic processing. You're actually looking through the lens. That's the big difference. One looks through the lens, one's looking at an electronic version of the image, alright, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And, of course, when they first came out, the problem was technology being so young. They failed in many, many areas to compete properly with the DSLR, and there was this massive outpouring of disdain towards mirrorless by so many DSLR users and they didn't reckon them having any serious future. Well, as you know, technology changes, things get better, and so we have now moved to the place where Nikon, canon, fuji, sony, olympus, panasonic, leica, hasselblad I mean, you know, they're all making mirrorless cameras. Now the only one that isn't, or the only one that's making DSLRs, is Pentax, and they do that because some people don't want to change up to mirrorless cameras, right? So that's basically what happened. But you've got this big question, haven't you? So why? What's the advantage of all this stuff, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't understand how it makes it any better, other than presumably a mirrorless camera is lighter to hold. What's the difference is it does it produce in like amazing images?
Speaker 1:or tell me you're still using a DSLR. You're using a Canon 5D, aren't you? Yes, yeah, okay, and I've still got a Canon 5D outstanding camera to all expect. To all intents and purposes, it's a great camera and capable of taking amazing shots, and it was heralded as a stunning camera for years before mirrorless came along.
Speaker 2:Hang on by the end of this episode. Am I going to have to go and buy myself a mirrorless camera? No, okay.
Speaker 1:But you might want to. So there's a lot to cover here. I'm just going, guys, I've got some notes on my screen and I've also got my recording data on my screen for to record this recording, and I've got one block in the other, so I'm just taking a second to move this around. I might edit that out, okay. So the biggest difference this is the biggest difference. So have you actually looked through the viewfinder of a mirrorless camera?
Speaker 2:No, do you have one here for me?
Speaker 1:It's like Blue Peter. Here's one I prepared earlier, so I'm not going to do it during this Because it is going to disrupt the yeah Okay. On a mirrorless camera, the light comes in through the lens, no mirror. So as soon as it goes through the lens and hits the sensor, it transmits a little picture To the viewfinder screen, the electronic viewfinder. And this is when you first pick up a mirrorless camera. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where I'm going to use a technical term here this is where you poo your pants the most.
Speaker 1:Because this is so exciting? Because you're looking at an electronic view of the image in real time. As you turn your aperture ring or your shutter speed dial or change your ISO, you can see all those changes take place in the viewfinder. Wow, which means so you shoot primarily in manual, don't you okay? So I don't know what you prefer to set first might be your iso and then maybe think, okay, I'm going to open my aperture wide up and then I'm just only going to change my shutter speed to get the right exposure.
Speaker 1:And you're looking at a little needle or a graph or some lights inside your viewfinder, trying to get it into the middle. And when it's in the middle you know it should be correctly exposed. Well, you don't have to do that with mirrorless. As you change any one of those three dials, you can see whether the picture is correctly exposed or not. So if the picture looks a bit dark, you just brighten it up. If the picture looks a bit bright, you darken it down. And here's the thing. In theory, you should never get an under or over exposed photo, ever again.
Speaker 1:I'm already sold in reality, not all in time but look let me give you an example.
Speaker 1:So back in the day when I was shooting a wedding, let's say I'm doing an all-day wedding, from 8 o'clock in the morning, doing the bridal prep right the way through to the first dance. It could be a 12-hour job and with two DSLR cannons over my shoulder, one with a Typically I would take a In the early days. It changed. It changed very quickly, but let's say I've got something like an 85mm 1.2 on one lens and maybe a 24mm 1.4 on the other. I rarely shot with zooms, I tended to stay with primes, so that was the kit I ended up with for most of the time. So 85mm for portraits on one camera, 24mm for wide shots on the other camera. A lot of heavy weight to carry around, especially the 1.2, because that's a really heavy piece of glass. That's a big bit of glass. But this is how a DSLR user works.
Speaker 1:They take a picture and then they do a process which has got quite a derogatory term these days it's called chimping. They chimp. So what they do? They take a picture, then they grab the camera, usually with both hands, and look at the back screen and when you demonstrate this to people, this is what chimping is. They say oh, that's just like how a chimpanzee looks at something. Yes, that's where it came from. It's called chimping. So you take a picture, check it by looking on the back. If it's too dark, you brighten it up, try it again. If it's too bright, change it and take it again. You keep chimping until you've got the right exposure.
Speaker 1:So typically for a whole day's, it would not be unusual for me to shoot somewhere around about. I'm averaging about 1250, 1250 pictures for the day and of those there will be duplicates. Where I've chimed and it's not been correctly exposed, it's been too bright or too dark, and I've taken it again, or they've moved or someone's blinked. You know, sometimes you just don't get the right shot, not because of your fault, but because something's happened in front of you when I went over to mirrorless and, um, I'm shooting with fuji. So this is going to be smaller anyway because it's crop. It's not a full-frame camera, it's a crop sensor, 1.5 crop sensor. Everything's so much lighter, and two Fugees and two lenses is about the same as one full-frame and one lens. It just I completely liberated.
Speaker 1:I got home and I could walk With the Canons, the full-frame heavy, I was knackered and some long weddings, I'll get home and I'll spend the rest of the day dead. You know, absolutely, absolutely towel-trucked, as they say, Anyway. So you've got the weight thing, and then you've got this thing with the chimping on the DSLR. Now you don't need to chimp with a mirrorless camera, because what you see in the viewfinder is what comes out, is what you. What you see is what you get. So, providing the pictures look correctly exposed as you take them, you don't have to check ever again. Yeah, wow, okay. So remember what I said the average 12-hour wedding photo day was about 1,250 images. It was down to 750 with the mirrorless because I didn't have to shoot stuff again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So I just did a shoot last week and it was a mixture of doing headshots and they gave me this tiny dark little room of doing headshots and they gave me this tiny dark little room to do headshots in Perfect, thank you. And then they wanted a couple of group shots and then there were certain members of staff where we wanted pictures together, but the room was so small that if they wanted a picture of more than one person we had to find a different space. So I had all my lights set up in the little dark room and then would occasionally step out into this beautiful garden to get a couple of group shots.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I didn't know about chimping. I didn't know that was a term, but I spent so long every time I went outside trying to correctly expose because I'd been working in a studio environment and stepping outside, then stepping back into the studio, then stepping back outside and more. These people didn't want to have their photos taken anyway. So when you then have to prolong the experience for them because you're trying to correctly expose the picture, yeah, it was a little bit awkward, yeah. So, yeah, I can straightaway see where a mirrorless would have been a better option for me in that environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So just to reiterate for anyone who's listening the big advantage that swayed most people over in those early days was the fact that what you saw in the viewfinder is what you got was the fact that what you saw in the viewfinder is what you got, and it was showing you the level of brightness for the picture and also colour temperatures as well.
Speaker 1:So you can adjust colour temperature on the fly and you can add a bit of warmth into it or take some of the warmth out. But if it's a raw file you can always change that in post anyway. So in those early days of mirrorless there were all kinds of electronic things going on which put the cameras at a disadvantage over dslrs. Dslrs were reliable, they were fast, they focused quick and they were focused in low light reasonably so. And the one of the big selling points of mirrorless was that these cameras were smaller. So think about it if you buy a mirrorless camera.
Speaker 1:There's no need anymore for the mechanical mirror mirror mechanism which is bits of metal and springs, coil springs and glass and so on. That all comes out. And then there's no need for the pentaprism which sits in the top of the camera, which reflects the image. So the image comes in, hits the mirror, bounces upwards, hits the pentaprism is reflected twice and then out to your eye the pentaprism is no longer needed. It's a chunk of glass and it's kind of pentagrammish. It doesn't summon the devil or anything like that. It's got five sides or something weird. Anyway, that no longer needs to be in the camera. So as soon as they stopped putting mirror mechanisms and pentaprisms into these mirrorless cameras, everything started shrinking and the promise was lighter cameras. The problem is that the lenses aren't. The lenses are still huge and very, very heavy. So for me I stayed with Fuji because the bodies were tiny and the lenses were small and they were perfect. And there's certain elements of mirrorless technology which allow sensors to see more light and work in lower lighting conditions. So a crop frame mirrorless would produce much nicer low light images than a DSLR crop and, conversely, a full frame mirrorless vastly outperforms a full frame DSLR. For the same reason, that mirror popping up and down in front of the sensor in a DSLR was responsible for lots of things which held back technical developments, and I think you're going to ask me why in a moment, aren't you?
Speaker 1:Hi everyone, it's Kevin Aaronson and I want to tell you about some exciting changes I've made to the Photography Masterclass, my in-person course that's been helping photographers grow since 2019. Yep, this is an in-person course, in a classroom, with me, face to face. This is not online. As we approach our 10th intake in January, I've made some significant changes to celebrate this milestone. This masterclass goes beyond just technical skills. It's about learning to see the world as a photographer. I've shifted the focus to give even more attention to creativity, with three entire modules dedicated to developing your photographer's eye. I retained the more popular modules on shooting landscapes, photographing people, and there's a new one on black and white photography. This masterclass is more than just a course. It's a creative one year journey you'll share with other passionate photographers, growing together and forming lasting connections along the way. Need more information? Visit GoHSPcom, click on courses and select Masterclass. I'll also provide a link in the show notes below. Sure, you should see her face, guys. She's like shaking her head and screwing her face up, thinking, oh, my God, he's going to get technical. All right.
Speaker 1:In a mirrorless camera, the light comes in, there's no mirror. It hits the sensor and the sensor has electronics built into it to help it work out how the lens should focus. The sensor looks at the image, communicates with the lens and does the focusing. In a DSLR, because the mirror is in front of the sensor, the sensor can't do that. So in a DSLR, just tucked up a little bit outside in the focus path or in the light path of the DSLR, at an angle to the mirror, is a detector and that's responsible for the focusing.
Speaker 1:On a DSLR. Now think about it. When you press the button to take a picture on a DSLR, the mirror pops up out of the way to let the light go through to the sensor, but at that point it blocks that little focusing sensor from seeing the image, so it can't actually focus. While that mirror pops up on a mirrorless camera, it's seeing the image the whole time, which means it can focus at any point that the image is being shot, because there's no mirror to pop up and block the sensor. The sensor itself is the sensor, if you like. So it means that, unlike a DSLR, where all the focusing bits are in the centre of the frame. On a mirrorless they can go edge to edge. Right.
Speaker 1:And even on the most sophisticated DSLRs, you're still limited to a grouping of sensor points around the centre of the picture you're taking and it might be, on a very basic camera, just nine little bits which do the focusing. On a more expensive one it could be 30, 40, 50 of these little points, but on a mirrors it can be in hundreds or thousands. And because there's no mirror blocking the route from the light to the camera sensor and with those hundreds or thousands of little points running right across the whole sensor, it makes it very easy, with the right kind of algorithms running in that camera, to lock onto a moving subject and stay with it as it moves around the screen. So if you've got kids running towards the camera, you're a parent and it's the egg and spoon race and you're at the end. As the kids are running towards you, the kids, excuse me, as the kids kind of move around left to right as you're trying to focus on them, it locks onto them, stays with them, so the camera can stay still. The kids can move left and right across a screen, but it stays with them and locks onto them. So you, you have a technology at your fingertips a bit like, a bit like I was watching on television. I don't watch the news very often, but because of the news of Israel and all this war stuff going on, I did stop on there. They've got this dome shield, haven't they this iron shield or whatever it's called. And they've got these systems for tracking incoming missiles. It locks onto them and fires off and takes them down.
Speaker 1:It's a bit like that in a mirrorless camera. Wherever an image is within your screen, it will lock onto it and stay with it, no matter where that subject moves. It can lock onto a face. It can lock onto eyes. Oh my future. You can say automatic eye detection yes, do you want it on the left eye or the right eye, or do you want the camera to make the decision for you? It's nuts, wow. And then you've got subject detection. It'll detect birds, animals like pets, aircraft, bicycles, motorcars. It is just nuts. You could be a wildlife photographer who's photographing a bird in the air. It locks onto the bird's eyes and stays with it as the bird flies around. Cannot do that on a DSLR camera.
Speaker 2:No, and all that's kind of popping. There's two things that's popping into my mind as I'm hearing you talk about this. One is that's a lot of technology, so surely they go wrong more often. And the second thing is are they much more expensive?
Speaker 1:Oh, two brilliant questions. The first one I've not heard before Because it's all electronic. They rarely go wrong. There's nothing to wear out, whereas, you know, when you buy a used DSLR, everybody wants to know what the shutter count is, how many pictures it's taken in its life, because they want to see whether it's close to wearing out. Well, that doesn't happen with mirrorless, because there is no shutter in the same way. Ah, not entirely true. Try not to get too complicated.
Speaker 1:So you've got this mechanical mirror going up and down the DSLR, but you've also got a mechanical shutter, and in most mirrorless cameras you've got a mechanical shutter as well, but you've also got the option of an electronic shutter. Now, mechanical shutter is just something which hides the sensor from the light for a split second. For a split second it reveals the subject and then hides it again. So you know it's letting the light in and then it's not, but it's a mechanical way of doing it. An electronic shutter just turns on the pixels in your sensor and turns them off again. Nothing to move and it's silent. You can take pictures at a wedding in street photography or, in your case, you can take pictures indoors at that indoor event, those media things that you do, and they wouldn't hear a thing. They wouldn't even know a picture's been taken.
Speaker 2:Sold again.
Speaker 1:Cost? Yes, they do cost more.
Speaker 2:How much more?
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing when Mirrorless first came out, particularly with Canon and Nikon, and they both launched within a month of each other, which is weird timing.
Speaker 2:They were probably racing to see who could get there first.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there was a lot of industrial espionage going on there. All this is happening at the same time as people aren't buying little point and shoot cameras anymore and they're not even buying bottom of the range DSLRs anymore because their phones can now take great pictures. And so what happened to the camera market at the bottom end? The very basic cameras weren't selling. No one was interested in upgrading from their iPhone to a bottom-of-the-range DSLR because you can't put it in your pocket. And there was this general sense of oh my gosh, we're losing lots of newcomers to the world of photography because no one wants to bother, because they can get great pictures with their phone.
Speaker 1:So the manufacturers for some time time concentrated on the top end. So all their cameras that came out early on were full frame and they were massively expensive. So two grand, three grand, four grand, five grand and above, and the little cheap $299 job with a lens lens which you used to get with the DSLR was disappearing rapidly, the idea being that the only people really interested in buying proper photographer's cameras were those who were already into it and they wanted to sell to them. So they sold them on the benefits of mirrorless. They stuffed in loads and loads of gadgets onto it and everyone was thinking, oh, this is great. So there was this big move up to changing from crop frame cameras to full frame cameras, and so I don't think I've ever known a period in in digital camera history with so many people on their own full frame cameras.
Speaker 1:They don't need to, I think think they do. That's another debate. They don't need to, they're convinced they need to because people will spend three, four, five grand on a camera, a couple of grand each on lenses, and then post all their pictures in Facebook, where the photos are destroyed anyway by Facebook's compression algorithms. So I've worked as a professional with a 1.5 crop fuji for years. No one ever knew I wasn't shooting full frame and I got the benefit of cost and lower weight. I'm sure there must be some other benefits, can't? They are, but they're quite good lower weight and lower cost. So mirrorless is more expensive. Yes, now manufacturers are making crop frame mirrorless and the prices are coming down. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you won't have to pay that sort of money again. But if you, my advice is there's two things In your case, kelly, go for a used full-frame mirrorless because you're used to full-frame and I don't think it's worth you changing to something else. Because your brain is working. You look through a viewfinder, you know what to expect. If you go crop, everything changes. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The other thing is that if you're just starting out in photography, I'd say get yourself a cheap DSLR, no frills DSLR 100 quid, 200 quid and learn on that before you start looking at a mirrorless, Because mirrorless you need a degree to operate. For a complete beginner I've taught guys who've come along, who've joined one of my early workshops for people just at the beginnings of their photography journey their newcomers they buy a mirrorless. Oh my god, look at all these things. What do these buttons mean? What does this menu mean? What are all these options? And it's totally mind-blowing because they are capable of so much technically it's too much for a new photographer. New photographers, in my mind, absolutely should be shooting with a dslr until they get the hang of the basics yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:So what about the battery life?
Speaker 1:well, because the mirrorless is on the whole time. With an electronic viewfinder evf or you're looking at the image on the back screen that's using a lot more power and so the battery consumption is much quicker on a mirrorless camera. Um, if you run a dslr, it's almost unheard of going out with a spare battery in your pocket, but with a mirrorless you probably do. I normally carry a couple. Okay, they're getting better, though they are most definitely getting better If you've only got to go back five years. And the battery the number of shots you can get out of one battery. It was a lot less than what it is now.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, because at the moment I I well, I never used to go out with a spare battery at all, ever, and it was only when the battery started to get old that it wasn't lasting quite as long. So now that's my spare battery, but but I don't even need to take it because I bought a replacement battery. But yeah, so presumably that's an additional cost you have to think about. If you're going to go mirrorless as well, is that you've got to get backup batteries? Yeah, lenses are there as many options? I read somewhere when I was doing a little bit of research that there aren't as many lens options with a mirrorless camera there's enough for you what are you trying to say?
Speaker 1:well, you're a two, two lens girl? I think yeah, and for most people they don't need a huge range anyway, but yes, there is a. The lens choice of dslr users is phenomenal, but um, it's taken a while for the mirrorless manufacturers to bring their lens range up now to a decent level and some of them allow independent manufacturers now to produce absolute blinding lenses. I mean Sigma. The Sigma R range is stellar and I use those on my DSLRs Superb image quality, but they're not Canon, no, and they were actually better than Canon and some of them were. So I don't believe these days that lens choice is an issue. I really don't. There's plenty of stuff out there.
Speaker 2:Okay, and we touched a little bit on image quality, but let's just talk about that a bit more. Is it better, is it worse? Is it the same?
Speaker 1:it's better it's better, um in better, in terms of low light, low light capability, so you can shoot a higher iso and get away with it much higher. Some of the higher iso figures on mirrorless cameras are astronomical.
Speaker 2:Why is that?
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is where you get into the technicalities of sensor technology Sensors which are covered in millions of pixels.
Speaker 1:Pixels are light detectors, little buckets that collect photons, and there are literally millions. On a 20-megapixel sensor, you'll have 20 million of these pixels. It's not unusual. Now 30, 40, 50 million, it's a lot. It's a lot.
Speaker 1:And back in the day, the technology until you actually see, you have to look at it. You have to google this to see what these things look like. It doesn't make sense when I explain it, but if you take the time to look at the images on google, it will become. It will make sense. But the way that a lot of sensors have been built until recent years, there's an element of wiring in the sensor which blocks some of the light hitting the pixels. So someone I think it might have been Sony reinvented the wiring of sensors to what's called backside illuminated BSI and they've reconfigured the layout of the sensor so that the wiring comes from the other direction is the easiest way of putting it, so that more light hits the sensor. It's able to work in lower light as a result and you get better pictures. That's one way. We are reaching the limits of my technical knowledge, so I don't think I actually want to go much deeper than this.
Speaker 2:No, that's. That's good, though that. That gives me a better understanding, so I appreciate that, okay. Um, so, as somebody who uses both, can you give us an example of what situation you would choose mirrorless and what situation you would stick with your DSLR?
Speaker 1:stick with your, your dslr. These days, I'll be honest, I use the dslr because it's just a lovely. It's just a lovely camera. The ergonomics fit my hand, the sounds of the click, it just sounds good. There's there's that the tactile feel of your finger pressing the button and you've sensing the click, not just in your ears but through the sensors of your fingertips. Pressing the button and you're sensing the click not just in your ears but through the senses of your fingertips. I like that. It's like picking up a film camera and feeling the mechanics of it. So there is an almost romantic feel and, to be fair, sometimes I just get pissed off with all the technology. Sometimes there's technology for technology's sake. So I'm going to slag off one particular manufacturer who I've never had any time for and I'm probably going to upset a lot of my customers. But I do not have time for sony for lots of reasons, not the most popular reason that people have for disliking it, which is their.
Speaker 1:The complexity of their menu system. The number of options for exposures and focusing is just. You'll need a degree just on how to operate that particular camera. It is so frighteningly complicated and I've looked at a number of things. I get given them to look at and play with by my students.
Speaker 1:I absolutely would never buy a Sony and some of my closest friends stroke students swear by them, but not for me. The other thing is that I have a big dislike of Sony as a corporation because they came in and rocked the boat by pouring in so much money, more money than Nikon and Canon have ever had. They're a global company with huge financial resources. They just bought themselves in as a player and almost put Nikon out of business. Nikon was so close to going bust and a lot of people are loyal to the cameras and the manufacturers they've had over the years and to see what was going on was heartbreaking. It was bully boy. Now here's the thing. What they brought to the table was extraordinary. It was game changing. It changed the whole marketplace and every manufacturer. So from that perspective, they brought something to revolutionize photography, both for the amateur and the professional.
Speaker 1:But the way they did it I completely disagree with and, what's more, this is my own old man getting onto his soapbox now mirrorless, because basically it's an electronic camera controlled by programming. If you want to update it, you can do it really easily and cheaply, whereas with a dslr. It was mechanical and it was much more expensive to change. So I got used to buying a canon and it would last me five years before they brought out the next update. These days, updates happen every year, sometimes less than that, and there's a constant pressure on photographers to constantly update, change and spend more money, and I think that's evil. I really do. That's evil because the photographer is already spending thousands and thousands of pounds, but to make them feel that they need the next model because theirs is no longer good enough so frequently, I think is evil. If you want to learn photography, stay with the same camera for five years.
Speaker 2:I mean hey you really get to. I love my camera. I've had it for years and years and years. Yeah, years and years. Okay, so just breaking it down a little bit then. So for specific types of photography, um, like sport or portrait or wildlife, is there a clear winner for you?
Speaker 1:mirrorless why?
Speaker 2:does it come back to that, that focusing that you talked about?
Speaker 1:yeah, because of the mirror interrupts the process of of focusing when it pops up on dslr. You can shoot high speed bursts without loss of focus. You can shoot constantly tracking, moving left to right, backwards and forwards, up and down in cross-dimensional uh with a mirrorless camera and it doesn't lose it's, it outperforms dslr on every, every conceivable. Um, what I'm looking for? Every conceivable, it's a word. What's the word looking for?
Speaker 2:oh, I'm the worst person to ask ask why.
Speaker 1:How about that?
Speaker 2:we'll take it we'll take it okay. So, going forward, then looking to the future do you think everything will go mirrorless and we will stop seeing dslrs being produced?
Speaker 1:well, to my knowledge and I'd be grateful for anyone to correct me on this Only Pentax now are making DSLRs, so mirrorless has already won.
Speaker 2:How does that make you feel?
Speaker 1:I'm not overly bothered because I can still shoot a DSLR if I want to and still get great pictures. And it does mean that anyone who wants to get into photography can buy a very inexpensive dslr to practice on and then, if photography isn't going to be for them, they haven't lost a lot of money.
Speaker 2:If they want to upgrade later on, they can do and I guess there will still always be a love, won't there, for dslr, the same way that I once I learned photography, I then went back and bought myself a film camera and taught myself film, if you hadn't said that I would have done. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is a great fear that AI is going to take over everything. But of course yeah, because film cameras are still really popular. It doesn't matter how far technology goes. People will still be romantic and nostalgic for the older stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's something so magical about developing your own pictures as well. Agreed, I definitely feel like I have a much better understanding. You do, yes, so thank you do you know?
Speaker 1:that makes me feel really good, good, good Because you have really seriously information that once I get past the fifth paragraph, I stop.
Speaker 2:I stop taking the information in and then I've forgotten what the first paragraph said. So to actually be able to sit down, have a proper conversation, ask questions, stop you and say, well, hang on, why is that? No, I do I, which is crazy that it's taken this long for me to sit you down and ask these questions, but I genuinely I understand the difference now and at the start of this conversation didn't really get it. So I appreciate it, thank you.
Speaker 1:Good, there are probably a few other elements, but let's just leave it there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because any more information and I'll forget everything we talked about. Okay.
Speaker 1:Good to talk to you again.
Speaker 2:And you.
Speaker 1:I'll see you in two weeks' time, so I think we're going to do it, aren't we?
Speaker 1:It's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from me, bye, hi. This is Kevin Aronson and I'd like to invite you to something really quite unique. It's called a photographer's evening. For the last six years, I have held small in-person roundtable gatherings with local photographers who are new to Hampshire School of Photography. The evenings are completely free and they are a great opportunity to talk about photography, share advice and network with other like-minded people. These evenings are designed for photographers who are still early in their photography journey, those who have never attended before any of our workshops and aren't professional or semi-professional photographers. Over the course of the evening, we'll dive into various photography topics and you'll have a chance to submit your own photos for review if you'd like. It's a relaxed, friendly setting where you can explore your progress, ask questions and gain loads of valuable insight from someone with decades of experience. If you're interested, head over to the GoHSPcom website to learn more. I'll post a link in the show notes below.
