LDS said:
scyrene said:
ahsanford said:
- No mirror = no mirror slap, one less thing that can fail, make noise, limit fps, etc.
Not wishing to pick a fight with you, but this is something that bugs me. Mirrorless cameras take away, but also insert components compared to DSLRs - and do we have any data that an EVF is less likely to fail (or has a longer average working lifespan) than a mirror assembly? The assumption I see repeatedly is that mechanical stuff fails more than electronic, but that doesn't chime with my anedotal experiences.
Don't believe an OLED display will last as long as a mirror, and even a mechanical shutter. I don't believe thirty years old or more mirrorless will still work - but I guess that's not an issue for many. Mechanical stuff built with excellent materials, engineering, and workmanship may last decades, if not wore out. Many electronic components may decay and stop working earlier.
I guess both arguments are correct! When designing electro-mechanical devices, a common assumption has been that the mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) of mechanical parts is about 10 times less than electronic parts. That is, mechanical parts fail earlier. Another principle is that reliability of the whole system - with no redundancy - is dominated by (i.e. lesser than) the reliability of the "loose end" component.
In old film SLR cameras, everything was mechanical and components with faster wear out, e.g. shutter mechanism, were bringing the system down.
In current DSLRs, statistically speaking, mechanical components are failing more frequently than the electronic parts.
In mirrorless cameras, with close to zero mechanical parts, currently, the loose-end is the OLED screen and viewfinder. They are used because of lesser power consumption than LCD. But OLED parts have average MTTF of 4-5 years which is less than half of the rest of the components. Also they suffer from color degradation, so as time goes by, the screen becomes dimmer and blue color turns to become darker. So what-you-see-is-what-you-get, which is a strong argument used by mirrorless diehards, does not hold for older cameras a few years down the road. It also has negative impact on resale value of older mirrorless cameras.