Quote:Canon's execs said in the past that they think that mirrorless only makes sense when you do it compact, since that is the advantage of mirrorless.
Compactness is by far not the only advantage of mirrorless.
To name a few:
- WYSIWIG through the use of EVF: what you see is what you get by opposition to an OVF (to some people it's a cons, but to many it's a plus).
- Larger EVF than most OVF, independant of body and sensor size.
- Ability to do much more than a traditionnal DSLR: almost unlimited features to be displayed in realtime in the EVF: histograms, blinkies, face detection, etc. ; face recognition, etc. pretty much anything that can be programmed on an image. In terms of features, we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg which is the opposite of the situation with traditional DSLRs.
- AF accuracy with any lens at any aperture ; no focus adjust ever required.
- Silent shutter.
- Electronic shutter speed up to 1/32000 (there might be rolling shutter artifacts but if the subject doesn't move fast, it happens rarely)
- Simpler to manufacturer, hence cheaper to produce (even if it's not reflected in the price ; technically it's much cheaper to manufacture). Corollary to the previous statement: theoretically more reliable over time (no/less mechanical parts).
- In terms of technology mirrorless systems are CPU/memory bandwidth bound, whereas DSLR are mechanically bound. The later has little room for improvement and can't compete as far as technical advancements go.