No phone will ever match an actual Leica camera if for no other reason that some Leicas are film, and the others have much larger sensors. Much of the Leica "look" is based on Leica lenses, which cannot be replicated on a tiny phone camera.
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DSLR discontinued? Been out of the loop.
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I'd add that if you are not a photographer (even in the amateur sense), you're most likely better off with a smartphone. I got into photography because I was tired of getting potato shots for my Web development projects. If the people who hire me had smartphones 20 years ago, I may never have felt the need to develop my photography skills as a professional asset.
Compared to my DSLR with some great lenses I have owned in last 30 years, I can’t find any replacement using mirrorless camera
OVF, low light, full frame sensors are big deal for some. I tried mirrorless but didn’t come close to what my 3 decades worth of lenses with DSLR did, and can’t beat manual focus on some of the older lens. I am not in to videos, and mirrorless smokes DSLR any day in video.
OP: Pentax still makes DSLR, may be not many updates like in the past. And DSLR prices have fallen, making the body attractive to upgrade if you already have great lenses.
The hard reality is smart phones ate up the camera market, be it Mirrorless or DSLR. Costco used to have an Slang of different cameras, they shut it down as the demand crashed.
One of the things mirrorless has done is let most makers put out "clean sheet" designs of new lenses, and by and large most mirrorless lenses are both optically better and also lighter than comparable SLR/DSLR lenses.
Nikon in particular made the smart decision to go from the smallest 35mm format SLR throat diameter on the current market in the F mount to the largest on the market in the Z mount. That frees them up a LOT for fast lenses.
Wide to normal lenses definitely benefit the most. From what I have seen, for example, the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8S is not measurably better than the older 70-200mm f/2.8E FL. If anything, from what I've seen, the made in Japan FL seems to have less sample variation than the made in Thailand 2.8S. On the other hand, there's a night and day difference between the F mount 14-24mm f/2.8G and the Z mount 14-24mm f/2.8S.
Even a standard 50mm lens needs a small amount of retrofocus on an SLR. Nikon launched the F mount, way back in 1959, with a 5cm f/2 but could only manage to get a workable f/1.4 lens at 5.8cm. It was a really big deal a few years later when they were able to make a 50mm f/1.4. Of course now that's no big deal, but it was then. A 50mm in mirrorless avoids this design constraint. The new Noct-Nikkor is so outstanding that if I actually had a use case(and could afford one) I'd be tempted to get a Z mount camera just to use it.
Mirrorless isn't a perfect solution to all of this, especially as you can't park the rear element a few milimeters from the sensor the way you can with film unless you want serious vignetting, color fringing, and other really strange artifacts. You can get them CLOSE, though, and having a large throat diameter(which I think all the makers increased in their mirrorless mounts) helps some but isn't the end all-be all.
The only lenses that, IMO, haven't really improved with modern optical refinements are true macro(greater than lifesize) lenses. The modern versions tend to be better balanced across the full focus range, but when you start getting really close it's hard to beat enlarger lenses and other lenses design for greater-than-lifesize reproduction.
Nikon in particular made the smart decision to go from the smallest 35mm format SLR throat diameter on the current market in the F mount to the largest on the market in the Z mount. That frees them up a LOT for fast lenses.
Wide to normal lenses definitely benefit the most. From what I have seen, for example, the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8S is not measurably better than the older 70-200mm f/2.8E FL. If anything, from what I've seen, the made in Japan FL seems to have less sample variation than the made in Thailand 2.8S. On the other hand, there's a night and day difference between the F mount 14-24mm f/2.8G and the Z mount 14-24mm f/2.8S.
Even a standard 50mm lens needs a small amount of retrofocus on an SLR. Nikon launched the F mount, way back in 1959, with a 5cm f/2 but could only manage to get a workable f/1.4 lens at 5.8cm. It was a really big deal a few years later when they were able to make a 50mm f/1.4. Of course now that's no big deal, but it was then. A 50mm in mirrorless avoids this design constraint. The new Noct-Nikkor is so outstanding that if I actually had a use case(and could afford one) I'd be tempted to get a Z mount camera just to use it.
Mirrorless isn't a perfect solution to all of this, especially as you can't park the rear element a few milimeters from the sensor the way you can with film unless you want serious vignetting, color fringing, and other really strange artifacts. You can get them CLOSE, though, and having a large throat diameter(which I think all the makers increased in their mirrorless mounts) helps some but isn't the end all-be all.
The only lenses that, IMO, haven't really improved with modern optical refinements are true macro(greater than lifesize) lenses. The modern versions tend to be better balanced across the full focus range, but when you start getting really close it's hard to beat enlarger lenses and other lenses design for greater-than-lifesize reproduction.
The look I was referring to regarding the Leica Standard is if the photos look reddish or with a shade of magenta as what I can see on photos shot by Huawei P30 Pro. I'm trying to limit the comparison to digital cameras by Leica and not the analog ones that still uses film rolls.
If you have not owned or used a smartphone with a Leica Standard (filter/setting), I suggest that you watch a YouTube video comparing photos shot on Huawei P30 Pro against smartphone models released in the same year 2019.
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There is so much misinformation creeping into this topic now it makes me think a lot of you have just been using Google and actually believe what it is telling you...
You can still get decent images out of an ancient Canon 350D. I certainly do! Coupled with a 200mm lens it can still out-shoot any phone on the market.
That is not gatekeeping but technology evolving.
The EOS M range was introduced 13 years ago and discontinued over eighteen months ago. The EOS RP was Canon's second full frame MILC camera, designed as a cut down Popular version of the EOS R, and that model is over six years old though still available.
And EOS is the brand Canon has used for every SLR, DSLR, and MILC camera since the late 1980s (using the EF, EF-M, and now RF mounts) when it introduced its Elctro-Optical System for autofocus. So this includes the R7, R5, and R1.
It depends on the type of photography you do. If yours is staged photography where you creatively control every aspect of creating the image and not just its capture, or ones where you have sufficient control like events, then that makes perfect sense.
But with other sorts of photography then the camera you have with you is the difference between capturing a moment or event or it being lost forever. A lower-resolution blurry photograph of something meaningful is still meaningful, it will still tell a story and preserve something ephemeral that is not possible if you do not take a photograph.
I absolutely prefer using a camera to a smartphone, but I prefer to let the light decide whether an image is worth being captured rather than whatever gear I have to hand. But that is because of the type of photography I take being more landscape, candid, and some nature.
I'm thinking that DSLRs lasted as long as they did because there wasn't technology available that could easily replace the mirror/pentaprism design.
When mirrorless came into reach, the efficiency of the design quickly proved to be superior to the earlier "mirror" design. So DSLRs have pretty much passed into history.
That has yet to make cameras "fully digital", so long as the mechanical SHUTTER remains.
But I would expect to see that disappear from nearly all cameras once stacked sensor and global shutter technology gets refined and made more affordable.
When mirrorless came into reach, the efficiency of the design quickly proved to be superior to the earlier "mirror" design. So DSLRs have pretty much passed into history.
That has yet to make cameras "fully digital", so long as the mechanical SHUTTER remains.
But I would expect to see that disappear from nearly all cameras once stacked sensor and global shutter technology gets refined and made more affordable.
Wow! I thought I am unique with this same problem, but with another kit lens from these days – 18-105 AF-S. After some time (maybe 5 years of shooting) I had noticed my shots have become blurry, no matter what aperture value I had, be it f3.5 or f11. They looked much worse than shots from old iPhone. I wonder if this issue is widespread with all cameras or it is just Nikon.
From what Google told me it was either dust or mold. Since servicing it was already as expensive as a new lens, tried doing it myself but ended up scratching the lens, it was probably coated with some material like oleophobic and I was cleaning with alcohol which effectively destroys it. Yeah I know, I am stoopido🤣
In fact, ended up with exact same lens. While I love the sharpness and how nice this one is to use at dusk and not have to crank up ISO, the issue is it is too narrow since lens originally is meant to be used with full frame Nikons, i.e. gives 75mm distance on DX bodies.
After some time I realized that I don’t like prime lenses at all that are somehow very loved in photography world (maybe for portaitists yeah, unbeatable. But for shooting landscapes zoom lens is much better)
Care to elaborate or possibly correct what you see as misinformation?
Instead of a generic statement, maybe make a bullet list of things in this thread that you say is misinformation.
Same here. I tend to use my phone for record-keeping (receipts & odometer readings, where I parked my car, location scouting for photo shoots, the occasional snapshot if I'm out for a walk, etc. - photos that are basically used and deleted soon after) but since I have a real camera with me most of the time, I will use one of those for any photo that I might share or publish.
And those are both mirrorless and DSLRs.
I will also add in that even though I'm still primarily a DSLR user, mirrorless does have a place in my world.
I have a Fuji X-T5. I actually bought it ahead of a vacation after my son was born. This is one of the few cameras I've bought new in my life, and mostly because it was compelling enough(as a still camera) of an upgrade for me over the X-T4 to want it, and as a fairly new to the market product, there weren't many used ones out there. I bought the 16-80mm f/4 kit, and have since added a few fast primes.
It's a great camera. It filled its role for me on that vacation, and as a travel camera several times since. I rarely tweak/adjust the RAW files(just like my D5, which is another reason why I use that camera so much) and it's a LOT less to carry around than a full size DSLR.
I have my complaints about operation. While I was actually on that first vacation with it, new firmware came out(I wasn't aware until after I was home) that addressed a lot of my initial annoyances with it. One of the big things was just learning to work WITH the camera, and recognize/appreciate that it worked differently than my Nikons. I still will gladly use it, but it's always almost a relief when I can use one of the Nikon DSLRs again.
Fuji does things their own way, and it's...well...not easy to keep track of how to do things on two separate cameras, although the muscle memory does take over when I pick the Fuji back up.
BTW, I cross shopped the X-T5 pretty seriously against Nikon APS-C offerings. I wanted APS-C for the size advantage. At the time, it really wasn't a competition, as the closest Nikon offering was the ZFc, which really wasn't even in the same league, and Nikon's APS-C lens line-up then was very much lacking. Since APS-C was my goal, Fuji was kind of a no brainer since, well, the whole lens line-up is designed for APS-C.
I have a Fuji X-T5. I actually bought it ahead of a vacation after my son was born. This is one of the few cameras I've bought new in my life, and mostly because it was compelling enough(as a still camera) of an upgrade for me over the X-T4 to want it, and as a fairly new to the market product, there weren't many used ones out there. I bought the 16-80mm f/4 kit, and have since added a few fast primes.
It's a great camera. It filled its role for me on that vacation, and as a travel camera several times since. I rarely tweak/adjust the RAW files(just like my D5, which is another reason why I use that camera so much) and it's a LOT less to carry around than a full size DSLR.
I have my complaints about operation. While I was actually on that first vacation with it, new firmware came out(I wasn't aware until after I was home) that addressed a lot of my initial annoyances with it. One of the big things was just learning to work WITH the camera, and recognize/appreciate that it worked differently than my Nikons. I still will gladly use it, but it's always almost a relief when I can use one of the Nikon DSLRs again.
Fuji does things their own way, and it's...well...not easy to keep track of how to do things on two separate cameras, although the muscle memory does take over when I pick the Fuji back up.
BTW, I cross shopped the X-T5 pretty seriously against Nikon APS-C offerings. I wanted APS-C for the size advantage. At the time, it really wasn't a competition, as the closest Nikon offering was the ZFc, which really wasn't even in the same league, and Nikon's APS-C lens line-up then was very much lacking. Since APS-C was my goal, Fuji was kind of a no brainer since, well, the whole lens line-up is designed for APS-C.
Yikes! I've also messed up a lens trying to fix it myself so I'm also in the club of people who won stupid prizes. In my case it was even more stupid because I was obsessing about dust in the lens that wasn't even affecting image quality.
So, public service announcement to everyone out there who gets the urge to restore things to pristine states... if a blemish on your lens isn't actually a problem, don't turn it into one. Learn from my expensive mistake.
Depending on the specifics of the blemish, it's amazing how little minor damage (or even not so minor damage) affects your image quality. My favorite lens, a 24-35mm f/2 got a very visible scratch in the rear element. I've been using that lens for years and I have yet to find a single image that was affected by that mishap.
Here is a short list then:
- Mirrorless has better ergonomics over DSLRs.
- Pentax has confirmed the K-1 Mark III.
- Global shutters are fairly new to the pro/sumer market, and not wholly satisfactory and you can't just torment those non-stop, so the live preview would still look different from the actual manually-commanded exposure.
- Nikon is trending away to mirrorless but the DSLR is still there, still manufactured.
- iPhone Pro phones have the ability to shoot in RAW.
- The truth is, a 14 or 20 mp sensor from 10 years ago will be on par or even better than new 45mp ones.
- Obviously, more megapixels are what videographers would love since they are all into shooting 4k 120fps.
- DSLR would not go anywhere, there is no substitute.
I don't recall anyone saying this?
I've seen some nuanced discussion around certain ways in which specific older sensors outperform old ones(noise, color discrimination) but not a blanket "better" statement....and obviously that's leaving out the resolution(if you need it).
Yeah that was my opinion but I guess need to explain it better.
Disclaimer: not disinformation, just a heated topic in photography circles and disagreements on this grounds are very, VERY common.
Whole camera industry has stalled. And the market seems to keep dying ever since 2012.
The reason?
Camera manufacturers cannot just bump megapixels from one decade to another, put more algorithms on top and pretend everything is alright.
APSC sensor size didn’t see significant increase ever since 2.6 megapixel Nikon D1 which will hit 30 years by 2029. I won’t wonder they will make 102 or 200 megapixel Nikon flagship by 2030… with same DX and FX sensor sizes.
Advantages of high megapixel count are obviously better crop (to an extent) and better to print large (industrial level printing, not some home hobbyist printer stuff) and probably better for pixel peeping on huge UHD displays, MAYBE better: 4k is just 8 megapixels after all, and 8k displays are not so widespread right now. But the disadvantages are not going anywhere: quirky dynamic range and diluted saturation, sometimes even worse low light performance or higher noise floor but this is mostly dependent on lens one is using.
The one single reason why megapixels are getting increased all the time is for marketing, since manufacturers cannot invent anything new anymore.
Lens quality matters much more than megapixel count. I had seen pictures taken with 3,4,10,12,14,16 megapixels and I never thought “well I think this picture is low quality because digital resolution sucks”. I was impressed with colors and lens quality.
There is obviously some degree to when it would feel that image needs more megapixels, but generally everything more than 5 megapixels is enough for good photos, 12 megapixels and it is sweet spot, 20+ and what would anyone need… more than enough. But 45, 48, 100, 200, 400? I mean even with new technologies like quad bayer there won’t be much of an advantage unless one loves cropping images (I don’t, digital zoom is still digital, optical or “zoom with your feet” ftw)