Mirrorless Cameras
For over 50 years, since the classic days of the Pentax Spotmatic and the Olympus OM-1, the most popular camera for the professional and enthusiast alike has been the SLR, or Single Lens Reflex camera. Its name denotes the mirror, or reflector, placed behind the lens to direct the image away from the film and on to a ground-glass viewing screen on top of the camera.The mirror flips out of the way when the shutter is fired. A pentaprism and viewfinder were added to 35mm SLRs to allow for eye-level viewing. The slogan, 'Just hold a Pentax' was born and until maybe the arrival of the Sony Alpha 9, nothing else would do.
Early digital cameras suffered from high battery drain and severe delays in-between pressing the shutter and actually taking a picture. The Digital SLR, with its optical viewing system and sophisticated autofocus became the 'go to' option. As technology has improved, most digital SLRs offer the option of locking up the mirror and viewing the image electronically in the same way as a TV camera or your smartphone. The electronic viewfinder, with built-in eyesight correction for spectacle wearers, can show all the camera settings, grid-lines, etc as well as a review of the captured image complete with histogram without taking the camera away from your eye.
As technology has developed, one manufacturer after another decided that the time had come to do away with the expensive mirror box and optical viewfinder altogether and rely totally on the ‘live-view’ image. DSLR users were encouraged to 'Go Mirrorless'.
In 2019, the term ‘Mirrorless’ came into popular use to indicate a DSLR that had shed its mirror and evolved into something smaller, better and totally electronic in its capture and display of the image. Truly, a camera for the 21st century.