It is a great moment for people that want to get into photography, because the market is moving to mirrorless but there's plenty of old high end DSLR gear that people are getting rid of but that can produce excellent pictures. The important part of the gear is the lenses, and those can be had used for a fraction of the cost of new ones. For the bodies, the sensor quality has consistently improved over the years, but the quality of 35mm at ISO 100 has been matched and surpassed a long time ago. As a first approximation, you can say that about 10 Megapixels are enough to match film[1]. Subjectively you could say that digital matches and exceeds film since around the mid-2000s.[2] Anything newer than the D2 will be more than enough for any hobbyist. The subsets of photography that benefit from the improvements of the past two decades are low light photography (birding), sports (if you can shoot 9fps and the pal next to you can shoot 11fps, they are the ones more likely to get paid for the picture) and videography (both due to quality of the recorded video as well as ease of use, like better auto-focus).
Why do you think the market is moving to mirrorless? I remember there was a craze when they first came out, but died out in a couple years. There still are a lot of good and "good for the price" mirrorless cameras available, but they certainly don't seem to be taking over the market.
As an active photographer, I still see most people using DSLRs or their phone. Actually, everyone I know who bought into mirrorless actually gave it up.
Back when they were popular I did look into getting one. But there were too many competing lens mounts, and not enough good lenses. So you could buy in to one mount only to have a different mount take over the market, or have yours go away.
I’m sitting in a hotel room before a wedding I’m going to photograph and I just laughed at this.
Back when they were popular? (Practically?) Every new camera coming out is mirrorless. Every pro is moving to mirrorless. It won’t be all that long before you can’t even buy a new DSLR.
Canon, Sony, and Nikon all have their own mount just as they always have. Canon and Nikon took the opportunity to make theirs larger/better/shorter distance, but you can use adapters to use old glass. As a matter of fact, I don’t even have any Z lenses for my mirrorless body.
Mirrorless is better, full stop. The only real disadvantage is battery life. Some people prefer an OVF, but personally I have a much easier time seeing through an EVF. The jump in focus accuracy is an absolute game changer, and it’s worth switching for that reason alone.
I have a Z8 on the way and then I’ll be fully mirrorless myself, and I can’t wait to ditch what’s largely considered the best DSLR ever made - the D850.
I haven't used one lately, but ten years ago the delay between seeing the image and capturing it was so great that it made them useless for people photography (unless people are posing, but I like to capture real emotions as they are happening).
Are they better now? In my experience, the shutter lag must be close to 0 to be able to capture the right facial expression. Lag ruins pictures.
They are much better now. The pro I know went from a canon 5D mkiii to mirrorless R5? (Classical performance photos). It’s quiet fast and the new lenses are better/smaller. The lack of
A mirror means it’s faster as it doesn’t have to physically flip it up to take the picture. They’ve embeded the focus sensors on the image sensor so it’s much faster focusing than previous mirrorless[1]
Even the best mechanical shutters and mirrors in DSLRs have lag too, there is a delay between button press and capture - the relatively large mirror can't defeat physics and move in an instant - the latest mirrorless models are generally competitive now with the ultra-short lag time of the best DSLRs.
DSLRs are worse for capturing the right facial expression in some ways too, because the mirror flip temporarily blocks the viewfinder. With an electronic shutter enabled, a wedding photographer on mirrorless will never have the viewfinder blackout during burst shots when trying to capture "the moment". The mirror/shutterbox puts the "real" world lag on many DSLRs in the 60-120ms range, which is not so hard for an electronic viewfinder to get competitive with.
Mirrorless models with electronic shutters in theory also have the option to continually "precapture" and then use an image from say 100ms ago when button pressed - the iPhone does this to reduce lag time even more, and try to eliminate human response time from the process. A DSLR can only do this concept if the mirror was up blocking the view finder.
While people assume that there is a degree of "WYSIWYG" with the mirror, this isn't always 100% true either. Cheaper/small prisms or pentamirrors result in much dimmer and smaller viewfinders than a good electronic viewfinder, especially on APS-C sized sensors, and 100 percent view coverage is rare outside of high end ones. AFAIK all electronic viewfinders to date are generally 100 percent coverage, and often bigger.
One enormous benefit for wedding/event photographers that mirror elimination accomplishes is making the camera silent. A high end DSLR operating at its highest burst speed is very noisy as the mirror slaps back and forth, which genuinely can be problematic in quiet or intimate settings. The mirror boxes also generally are only good for typically 100-150k activations, which lasts a long time, but they can wear out.
The Canon R5 has no lag at all. The EVF (a 1600x1200 120Hz OLED display with 100% coverage) feels as fast as an optical viewfinder, and the R5 can shoot 20fps with full autofocus tracking and without blacking out the viewfinder. Shutter lag is actually less than on DSLRs as there's no mirror to flip and electronics have gotten way faster in the last 10 years.
The newer ones like the Canon R3 are even faster and the Sony A1 can do 240fps in the EVF.
Another perk of EVFs: they're much brighter indoors as they simulate the actual exposure.
Ten years ago is a long time when it comes to camera tech.
I'm very sensitive to lag to the point where I couldn't play Smash Bros on a friend's TV that he insisted was fine. I'm not sure what the actual numbers are but the EVF latency is for all practical purposes imperceptible, and the cameras can shoot much faster bursts to boot.
Plus, people tend to change their expressions when a shutter/mirror is clacking away and mirrorless cameras can be silent.
[1]: https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/30745/what-is-the-...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThpQWhOfKO4