AFFAIRS OF THE HEART

When thieves broke into my house a couple of years ago and relieved me of the bulk of my DSLR kit, it seemed like the opportune moment to switch to a mirrorless camera. Amazingly, the insurance company paid up without a whimper so very soon the funds were just begging to be spent. I wasn’t particularly dissatisfied with my DSLRs – indeed, one of the stolen bodies was a very recent acquisition – but the mirrorless route looked more interesting, especially in terms of what was possible with lenses. Incidentally, in this process, I stepped down a sensor format – from full frame to APS-C – primarily because it made longer telephoto focal lengths more accessible and I was more than satisfied with the performance of my chosen brand’s imagers.

That brand is going to remain anonymous, but my DSLR kit was Nikon. I’d been with the marque since 1988 when the 35mm F4

SLR was introduced and I bought one almost immediately. I switched to Nikon from Minolta after the Maxxum 9000 proved to be unreliable, specifically the coupling between the camera body and the 5fps bolt-on motordrive. Since that initial purchase also involved a 70-200mm f/2.8 telezoom and a 300mm f/2.8 telephoto prime among my first AF Nikkor lenses, it was a pretty significant outlay, but proved to be a good investment. Over time I acquired an F90 and an F90X as backup bodies, then upgraded the F4 to the F5 when it arrived in 1996. Subsequently I converted the F90s to an F100s. I was a late convert to digital capture, starting cautiously with a Nikon D70 before fully committing with the

D3. In the end, my working kit was a D3S and a D610, plus I’d just bought a D750; the latter two – and a few lenses – were subsequently carted off into the night by an opportunistic gang of teenage housebreakers on a local crime spree. Incidentally, they were later apprehended, but of course, my camera gear was long gone.

One of the reasons I’d originally settled on Nikon was the excellent ergonomics which I’d noted right from when I first started testing cameras in the early 1980s. One of my earliest tests was of the FM2 (1982) which had a fundamental ‘just-rightness’ handling even back then.

Of course, being an all-mechanical (and hence all-manual) camera, it wasn’t a particularly complex design, but Nikon has maintained effortlessly efficient ergonomics throughout the steadily increasing automation of the 35mm SLR era and into the age of the DSLR.

And it all came flooding back as I was recently testing the D780, Nikon’s latest upper mid-range DSLR – and possibly its last – which felt like being reunited with an old friend. It felt good in the hand, nicely balanced, and everything is where you’d expect it to be... even if you’re not so familiar with Nikon DSLRs. No, I haven’t let any of this colour my review, but the reality is that similar to Canon’s EOS 90D, these cameras are truly the best examples of the DSLR maker’s art – and if I was still in the Nikon camp, I’d sign up for a D780 in a flash, as much as I really like the Z 6.

But more to the point – it doesn’t matter whether it’s a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, it’s what you feel the most comfortable with. Given we develop a pretty intimate relationship with our cameras – perhaps more than with any other consumer product – familiarity is a huge factor in the considerations when the time comes to purchase a new one. And that’s why the answer to the reflex-or-mirrorless question isn’t quite as clear-cut as old technology versus new technology, or any other comparisons that are commonly made (including by me). Throw in the emotional, and even psychological, elements that are integral parts of a creative process such as photography, and you’d have to say that, in the end, it probably doesn’t matter. It’s simply about what works best for you.

I’ve now happily bonded with my new camera ‘family’ and there are aspects of the mirrorless configuration that I really like, but it’s still the key fundamentals of styling and design that I actually love (plus, of course, the fact that I always get the results I want). I won’t be ‘going back’, but whatever form your next camera takes, buy with the heart and not the head. You’ll be happier for it.