"DSLRs are a dying breed"

(did a quick search and didn't see this posted already....so thought I would share)

Google+ led me to an interesting article by photography Trey Ratcliff.

Around the 35 minute mark he makes comments on how he will not be buying any more DSLR gear and will be watching technology with the "3rd generation" (mirrorless) lines of cameras.


http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2012/01/04/dslrs-are-a-dying-breed-3rd-gen-cameras-are-the-future/

The customer has the last say on that, with their wallet. Minolta learned that lesson. They had some great ideas, but not all of them sold. It's also what put them in to financial dire straights. But leaping forward to the now, the A77's popularity is one of those steps Trey Ratcliff is talking about. I can't see Cannon and Nikon shrugging their shoulders at this ether. Only the future will tell. Outside of that, I'm just going take pictures. That's my part of the chain, and I like being there.

apart from being a "camera" (a box wherein the light is received from outside through a lens and wherein is a recording medium, be it film or a digital sensor) a camera usually contains a way to view what area is recorded.

that part has evolved over the years: from the view camera via a simple rectangle frame mounted on the box to the ingenious viewfinders on rangefinder camera's to the "through the lens" viewfinder of the slr. the view camera was/is not that easy to use because you see the world upside down and need a cloth over your head to see anything at all, the rectangle showed things within a frame the right way but not very accurate, rangefinder view finders where very good in the sense that they were very light and could be used under low light quite well, but were not accurate showing both usually somewhat more then you actually saw on film and they also show some parallax, especially when doing close up photography.

thus came the slr, where you look through the lens and where in theory "what you see is what you get", although in practice you may get something more then you see.

thus the slr is not that special, the only virtue being that the view is not upside down and thus somewhat better to use then a view camera.

in all cases what you want is to be able to see very well and exactly as possible what part of the outside world is recorded.

as soon as that can be done with a camera that does no longer need a optical viewfinder, there will in fact be no need anymore for a (d)slr design. it is difficult to predict which way it will go, but i can imagine a "Nex-like" solution that makes all previous viewfinders obsolete. we are not there yet, but it will come. a optical through the lens viewfinder is no essential constituent of a camera, a viewfinder that shows you exactly (or as closely as possible) is!

imagine the situation where you can put on a pair of specs that at your command can show you what the camera "sees" - where the camera may be somewhere else then in your hands and you are able to fire a shot with some form of remote control....the slr is just a part of a evolution, it came, was/is rather dominant, and eventually it will disappear.

We're at the same point we were at with film a decade ago. Any dslr company that fails to adapt quick enough will go the same way as Kodak.

Trey Ratcliff says in that article , "I want to wait for a few more iterations," and I would say so too. My next camera will not use an EVF, it doesn't suit me and I suspect it may never suit me.

Ratcliff is arguing that technology becomes obsolete, but horses (for instance, and specifically mentioned by the author) are still useful and can do things that motor vehicles cannot; indeed, a 1930's motor vehicle could have been argued by Ratcliff to have made horses obsolete in the 1930's, but today the horse is no more obsolete than it was then while those motor vehicles are now only useful as collector's items. Getting back to camera technology, 4x5 film cameras still have a place, so old technology does not just die off.

I've seen lots of nonsense talk about the iphone/ipad taking over the photo-market.
Well - i still do have a DSLR and a seperate HD-videocam. Why?

Because those have a different shape, that makes it easier to handle 'm for it's own purpose.

I don't believe dslr's are going out of the market, there's too much expensive glass and the results are still superior to other platforms. The market may shrink a bit - so that's good, this means more chanses to find cheaper 2nd hand minolta 600mm f4. ;-)

Because Kodak is going the chapter 11 route - doesn't mean digital SLR's will follow the same road.

The mirrorless camera's like the Nex may take up the lower part - but there'll be some part of the market that wants to keep some balance in their hands (i will keep on buying bigger cams - the nex is nice but it's too small - my format is about the K-M 5D and the A55).

Breeds don't die, they evolve...,and that's what's happening now.

Personally, I don't think of the mirrorless interchangeable lens camera as different from a DSLR. Of course, with a DSLR there's the darned mirror, and mirror slap, and the blackout, and a need for mirror lockup occasionally, but really, the key thing for me is the interchangeable lens and the size of the "negative."

An A99 that is as reliable as my A900 would be dynamite, and an improvement..., and it's just a matter of time.

I think what is really happening in our field, and Sony exemplifies this trend, is the "death" of the medium format camera in favor of the fullframe.   With high quality sensors (and please Sony, high quality Jpegs) the 35mm format still has enormous potential.