Why Mirrorless? 

DSLR technology has really stagnated over the last few years. New models come out with a few more megapixels and some slight improvements in features, but I can’t even remember what the last major advancement in DSLR was. That’s because it’s pretty much dead technology. With mirrorless cameras there’s so much more possibilities for technical advancements and Sony is the market leader in mirrorless. Here’s a few features of mirrorless that I personally love and works well for my own photography style. 

Electronic View Finder 
Without a doubt the thing I love the most about mirrorless is the electronic viewfinder (EVF). With an EVF you are seeing through the viewfinder what your sensor is seeing. If you change your exposure you can see if get brighter or darker through the EVF. If you’re shooting backlit portraits this traditionally is a really challenging time to get a balanced exposure. With a DSLR you might take a shot, look back it at, too dark! Adjust your settings, take another, look again, too bright! With an EVF you actually see your exposure before you take the photo, so there’s no need to look back and check the images. It makes shooting so much faster and more accurate. I also like the way you can see sun flares and position yourself and your subject to place your flare where you’d like it in the frame. 

Superior Focus
On a DSLR to focus the camera has to bounce light off the mirror, onto another mirror and then onto the focus sensors. That calculates the distance for the camera to focus and then hopefully when you take your photo if all the calculations were correct and everything was in perfect alignment then your subject will be in focus in your actual photo. Unfortunately in reality often this isn’t the case, and you might shoot 3 photos in a sequence of the exact same stationary subject, but they may all be slightly different variations of focus. Often you get lenses that for some reason just don’t get along with the calculations in the focus system, which is when you get back or front focusing issues (a lens that always focus slightly behind or in front of your subject). You can attempt to fix this by micro adjusting for the lens, which tells your camera to focus slightly forward or back for that particular lens. But when you shoot at different distances the micro adjustments aren’t quite as accurate. 

With mirrorless cameras the focus sensors are on the actual image sensor. So with mirrorless then there’s no bouncing around on mirrors and calculations required, your pre-focus and actual focusing are exactly the same. I’ve found the focus accuracy of the newer Sony Alpha mirrorless cameras to be far superior to that of a DSLR, and if you take 3 photos of your stationary subject then you’ll find they will all be in focus. There’s also no need to micro-adjust any lenses, ever! Everything just works. I’ve been blown away be how accurate and crisp the Sony images are. I get a real kick from zooming in to 100% on the A7RIII 42MP files and reading a guys board dimensions. (Note this original post is about 5 years old and I have recently updated my gear below, now running the A7RV which is 61MP so you’d be able to zoom even tighter!) 

Sony A7RIII + 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 full image

Sony A7RIII + 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 at 100%

The Sony mirrorless cameras also have some super sophisticated focus tracking modes and also Eye Autofocus which is absolutely amazing. The camera will lock focus onto the closest pupil of your subject so your portraits are tack sharp on the eyes. There’s also Eye AF for animals which is an absolute game changer for wildlife photographers. 

Smaller Lighter Camera Bodies
Mirrorless bodies are far smaller and lighter than DSLRs. This is a huge bonus for travel & hiking or long shoots like weddings where you are using multiple cameras for 10 hours at a time.

Image Stabilization
Most of the newer Sony mirrorless cameras have IBIS (in-body image stabilization). Which is basically and image stabilised sensor. This means you can shoot slower shutter speeds without getting camera shake. I’ll often shoot low light landscape images at around 1/15th of a second. This means I can shoot a higher aperture getting better depth of field and a lower ISO giving me cleaner images and more dynamic range to work with when editing.