Photography Q&A

QI keep seeing references to mirrorless cameras. What are they, and what is the advantage of using one (if any)?

B Stephens, Macclesfield

AIn the world of cameras with interchangeable lenses, DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) and mirrorless are the two options. With a DSLR, you can see your subject in the optical viewfinder via a reflection from a mirror inside the camera body. When the photo is taken, the mirror swings out of the way and the light goes through to the image sensor. As the name suggests, mirrorless cameras capture images without using a mirror in the camera's body, and as such don’t have an optical viewfinder, but an electronic one. Although mirrorless is still very young in comparison to DSLR, the technology is constantly evolving, and is now arguably more popular than DSLR. In terms of advantages, a number of mirrorless cameras offer more focus points, faster autofocus and faster frames per second than DSLR. Due to this, a lot of DSLR users are moving over to mirrorless. With manufacturers like Canon and Nikon moving fully into mirrorless only production, they will continue to improve over the next few years and continue to gain popularity. Q My camera allows me to save certain settings, but how useful is this? Won’t each situation require something different? G Berman, Shrewsbury A With bird photography, there are a number of scenarios that require specific settings. A stationary bird for example wouldn’t necessarily require a high shutter speed or frame rate, whereas a bird in flight would. So, it can be helpful to load settings into your camera for these scenarios, saving you time when an opportunity arises. Most cameras also have the ability to customise buttons on the camera. A very popular one among Canon users is to have a button set up that if pressed will switch from all autofocus points to the central one only. This is particularly helpful if the subject is in a position where there are obstacles in the way, a tree for example.