I think it’s time to say openly that DSLRs have lost the battle. Their time is over. Mirrorless won.

Why would I say that? Well, there are a number of reasons.

Mirrorless cameras are so much cheaper than their DSLR counterparts. My mid-range mirrorless Fuji X-E series is about £500 (New), the mid-range counterpart Canon (or Nikon) £1200…

I have been a Canon shooter for almost 2 decades and I loved their cameras and lenses. However, they totally ignored mirrorless and now nobody buys their mirrorless camera. And Nikon is in the same situation. They did release a mirrorless camera like Canon did but they were very poor quality and nobody was buying them.

On the other hand, people were buying mirrorless Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic, and Sony cameras like hot cakes. And I don’t blame them.

People on my Lightroom and Photoshop courses often ask me what cameras to buy and I see no reason to recommend DLSR. Quite oposite for mirrorless. Go into any photo shop and ask the stuff what camera they recommend: “cheap” mirrorless or expensive DSLR? I think you know the answer. And I don’t blame them, they’re in selling business, they’re supposed to make companies they work for money. Interesting enough, most people working in any photo or computer shops have very little if not no actual real knowledge of what they’re selling. I can spend half an hour online and I’ll know more about anything that most of them. They’re just sales people. My point is proven by a friend of mine who used to work for a photo shop here in the UK. He’s been into photography all his life and when he started working there they were told which cameras to sell. I guess we all know which ones…

Why else would I recommend a mirrorless camera and not a DSLR?

My mid-range mirrorless Fuji shows LIVE histogram in the viewfinder. Can your DSLR do that? I don’t think so. Even £6000 top of the range DSLR can’t do that. And having a live feed of the histogram is a fantastic feature to have, as you know as a photographer.

Lenses for mirrorless cameras are much smaller, lighter, and cheaper. And yet the quality is amazing. So it’s not about the size.

As an example,

Fujifilm’s XF 50-140mm F2.8 is £1300 and weighs just 995g

equivalent Canon EF 70-200m F2.8 is £1500 and it weighs 1.310kg…

Some mirrorless cameras feature built-in 5-axis image stabilisation. You heard it right, they have it built into the camera so you can use ANY lens. You don’t have to buy a lens with image stabilisation. With SLRs, forget about built-in image stabilisation… You need to buy image-stabilised lenses.

And the list goes on and on…

So before you buy a new camera think hard. The best camera you can buy is the one you’re going to have with you all the time. Are you going to carry around your £2-3k SLR camera weighing 3-4kg?