Sony, a company that has made innovative inroads in the camera market in the past few years, just announced its new Sony A9, yet another innovative product that continues the impressive progress of  mirrorless cameras. Some describe it as a “DSLR Killer.” I’m not so sure.  Some thoughts follow.

(Sit back. This isn’t going to be a short post! Hint: It isn’t anti-a9, though it isn’t exactly pro-a9 either.)

First, some personal background and perspectives. I use both mirrorless and DSLR camera systems — a Canon system based around the 5DsR and a Fujifilm system based around the XPro2. I use both for serious photography. Either may be my first choice, depending upon my subject and other conditions, and each excels at some things and is less capable at others. All of this is my way of saying that I’m not “pro-DSLR” or “pro-mirrorless,” and that I’m fairly brand-agnostic. (My first digital cameras back in the pre-2000 “stone age” period were mirrorless!) There are a lot of great cameras coming from by a range of manufacturers today and choosing one brand over another makes little difference to one’s photography.

I’m convinced at this point that mirrorless cameras have the potential to become the predominant serious cameras eventually, and that they are already serious tools that can be the best choice in some situations. Their pluses, both current and potential, include the following:

• Size and weight reduction by eliminating DSLR mirrors (and shutters) and placing the lens mount closer to the sensor.
• Reliability improvements as a result of minimizing mechanical components.
• Silent and vibration-free operation, especially as global shutter technology is perfected.
• Information-rich digital displays combining the target image with camera information.
• Potential manufacturing cost reductions.
• Increased speed in certain areas as electronics replace mechanisms.
• Potential for continuous display during high speed shooting.

There are some minuses, too.

• There will always be some latency in digital displays — it can be minimized to the point that it may (or may not) be insignificant, and it may or may not be reduced to the point that it equals or is better than mechanical latency of DSLRs.
• Power consumption is an issue since the sensor must be active whenever the electronic viewfinder provides an image. While DSLRs can typically provide well over 1000 frames (and sometimes a lot more) from a single battery, typical mirrorless cameras only provide a few hundred.
• Some photographers, though not all, prefer the live viewfinder image to the electronic video viewfinder image of mirrorless cameras.
• Mirrorless camera autofocus systems, despite tremendous progress, generally do not yet equal the performance of the best DSLR AF systems overall.
• Because systems come from new players in the digital camera market and/or because mirrorless cameras use different lens mounts, mirrorless lens availability (as measured by number of lenses with equivalent functionality) is somewhat lower.

The a9 provides an example of how far mirrorless cameras have come. In terms of qualities that are not directly related to its mirrorless design, it is unarguably a top notch tool, with excellent high ISO performance, image stabilization, connectivity, high quality image files, a solid physical design, an innovative sensor, and more. Gone are the days when mirrorless options felt and were often constructed like lesser cameras.

It pushes the boundaries in other important ways, too. In some situations it can work at up to 20 frames-per-second with autofocus and tracking. An electronic shutter can eliminate inter-frame blackout during continuous shooting. The sensor provides hundreds of AF detection points spread over nearly the entire sensor area, and Sony is gradually producing more professional level lenses for it.

All in all, it sounds like quite a camera, and it appears to be an important step forward, especially in terms of speed potential of several sorts.

But is it a “DSLR Killer?”

Some think so, among them a number of Sony-connected photographers who have had early access to the camera. But if we step back for a moment, we recall that “DSLR killer” is not a new term, and this is not the first camera to which the description has been applied. It isn’t even the first Sony camera to be described that way. Yet, DSLRs still seem to do quite well. While a number of photographers — and I’m one of them — have moved in part or even completely to mirrorless cameras, the DSLR was emphatically not killed by the previous “DSLR killer” cameras. Will this camera be the actual “killer,” or will it be another impressive and welcome development in an evolution that is a bit less dramatic than all of that?

You can probably tell that I think the latter is more likely than the former.

Will mirrorless cameras eventually supplant DSLRs? I think it is likely — possibly virtually certain. Will some specific mirrorless camera, much less the a9, “kill” DSLRs? I doubt it.  Why not?

In order to quickly supplant (e.g. — “kill”) an existing technology, the new technology must be more than incrementally better than the thing it is replacing, its downsides must not be deal-stoppers for significant numbers of users, and ideally it will actually attract large numbers of new users who weren’t previously “in the game.” Another factor is cost — it is possible to kill an existing product by bringing out an equivalent or better product at a much lower cost, but the increment of improvement has to much higher if the costs are similar or, worse, the new technology costs more.

As an analogy, let’s consider a rather different technology for a moment, one that provides examples of both “killer” and incremental technology changes.

When the automobile was invented, and especially when it became possible to mass-produce cars, the old technology gave way to the new. Cars were “horse and buggy killers” before long. The transition was so complete that the infrastructure supporting horses and buggies mostly disappeared and eenhas b replaced by infrastructure supporting automobiles. Horses are not gone, but we rarely see them today in situations where they were once common.

Similar to the transition from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles, the transition from film-based photography to digital photography technologies was profound and relatively rapid once a critical mass was achieved. Digital cameras, as a breed, did more or less “kill” film cameras and did so quite quickly. Most of the transition took place over about a decade. The experience arguably became much better with digital — people could see photographs immediately, the costs of film mostly disappeared, printing and other forms of photo sharing were easier, and the image quality results were soon as good as or better than with film.

(Even the infrastructure aspect is similar. Enlargers are today a dime a dozen and some people can’t give them away, and formerly expensive film cameras can be picked up for a song. Film processing is harder and harder to find. Almost no one owns slide projectors. Film is not completely gone, but many sources report that sales of film are today about 1% or less of what they were before the digital camera revolution.)

There are other examples of important innovations within the context of the automobile. Let’s take the development of automatic transmissions as an example. I’m old enough to remember when almost no one had a car with automatic transmission. The cost was a lot higher and the experience was not that great, with reduced performance, less reliability, and poor mileage. While the automobile itself was a disruptive technology, improvements to the automobile were not. It took many years, actually decades, to get to the point where most new cars come with automatic transmissions that are reliable, cost-effective, and don’t produce a significant performance or mileage reduction. Heck, today you can even shift your automatic transmission! There was no particular brand or model that “killed” manual transmissions (which now constitute a small percentage of new vehicles), though over time the technology did pull ahead as the problems were resolved.

The switch to automatic transmissions is a better model for the eventual prevalence of mirrorless cameras. Why is this? While mirrorless cameras improve or have the potential to improve many aspects of photograph-making…

• they do not fundamentally change the game in the way that digital cameras did relative to film.
• their pluses (size, weight, quiet, information in the display, fewer mechanical components, etc.) still come with some downsides (latency, less capable AF systems, power issues, etc.).
• there is nothing about them that changes the technical quality of the actual recorded image or how we can use it.
• they do not change how we work with photographs in post or how photographs are reproduced.
• they typically work with much the same sorts of lenses available to use on DSLRs, yet…
• they give up some lens automation capability in many cases, and…
• in some cases these shortcomings are in precisely the areas where their advantages lie — see the lack of fully automated long, big aperture telephotos for the a9 with its high speed continuous shooting.
• the advantage of smaller and lighter bodies decreases when the cameras use the same large lenses found on DSLRs.
• camera costs for functionally-equivalent equipment are not typically much lower with mirrorless than with DSLRs, and the costs can actually end up being higher.
• the cost of replacing lenses (in cases where adapted lenses surrender functionality and native fully automatic lenses are available) counters lower body costs.
• greater power drain requires more batteries (in many cases) and may only be overcome by adding “grips” that hold more batteries, thus negating (at least partially) the size and weight advantages.

None of these things damn mirrorless cameras. Remember… I use one. I love it for its smaller size — especially since I typically use it with primes — and lighter weight, which are advantageous in some aspects of my photography. Mine produces excellent image quality, an in some cases it lets me make photographs in ways that improve on what I can do with other types of cameras.

But while they may not be damning, these issues create a certain drag on adoption. Yes, there are people like me, who have reasons to use mirrorless cameras, especially in situations where the possible downsides are not so significant. For example, a good number of landscape photographers who almost always work from the tripod and focus manually find them very attractive, and folks doing street and travel photography love the small size and weight. But we aren’t seeing, nor are we likely to soon see, a wholesale move away from existing DSLR systems where folks give up the old gear for mirrorless. (What that happens, you’ll see the costs of used DSLRs drop to levels far below those of similar used mirrorless cameras. Nothing like that has yet happened.)

Mirrorless cameras are here now. They are often quite good, sometimes the best option, and they continue to improve at a rapid rate. At some point they will almost certainly take over from DSLRs. But that is not going to be a sudden thing — it will continue to be a gradual shift —  and it won’t change photography as we know it. Improve it? Yes. Radically? Not likely.

In the end I think what most photographers need to do is simply take a deep breath. Tamp down the gear lust. (Trust me, I understand it!) Remind yourself that the equipment that produced excellent results for you last month will still do that next month. Remember that there never has been a perfect camera, and that it is almost certain that the shiny new thing will reveal itself to also be an imperfect though effective tool. The changes are mostly positive, but they usually fall short of being radical.

If you are a “serious” photographer, it is likely that a fine mirrorless camera is in your future — if you don’t already have one — and that these cameras will continue to make important incremental improvements. But it will be sometime before they “kill” the gear that works well for you now.

What is your take on this, both mirrorless cameras in general and the Sony a9 specifically?

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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