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Comment by semiquaver | Hacker News Reader

I've been an amateur photographer my whole life and spent the best parts of my formative years in a darkroom. I've owned a number of film and digital SLRs that are quite dear to me.

That said, it seems like irrational nostalgia (which is perfectly understandable) is the only reason to prefer SLRs over mirrorless cameras at this point. The comparative disadvantages of mirrorless cameras were mostly temporary and rooted in the fact that SLRs had been around much longer. Now that the lens selection and technology has caught up, SLRs are strictly worse in every way.

Am I missing something or are there any durable advantages to resisting the seemingly inevitable march towards mirrorless?

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The slr tech is pretty cool (it’s mirror and a prism that gets the light from the lens to your eye). And a neat tech that flips the mirror out of the way so the “film” or sensor can see the light. You see close to what the camera sees, much better than the range finder cameras.

But it’s mechanically complex , expensive to produce and more than needed now. Especially if you can autofocus on sensor now. These new cameras should be cheaper to produce…but demand must be much lower.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_single-lens_r...

It’s amazing how good we get at designing:making things, then in a few years they go obsolete (my film camera T90 canon for example). I feel gas powered cars are going that way too, a bit more slowly.

Your reference to gas powered cars going that way (a bit more slowly) made me wonder about how quickly some product lines were disrupted in different industries.

First mass produced digital SLR was by Nikon in 1988[0]. So this would represent roughly 34 years to fully replace the product line with digital cameras.

First mass produced electric car would be either Tesla Model S (2012)[1] or their Roadster (2009)[2]. I'm not sure if 147 Roadster's count as mass production. So if gas cars are being fully dropped by 2043 or 2046 then it'd be on the same scale as the digital camera.

Feature phones being dropped in favor of smart phones was pretty quick. I'm not sure when major manufacturers stopped feature phone production, Nokia 3310 had a revival in 2017. So more than 10 years, but probably less than 15.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camera#cite_note-busch...

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#cite_note-40

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#cite_note-32

But do they keep the sound?

Yes, optionally. For some Japanese versions of mirrorless cameras, there is a forced sound even in silent modes.

Interesting, do they produce the sound through a speaker, or do they use some other mechanism?

Is that because of the camera voyeurism issues?

exactly. same reason why phones sold in japan don't have an option to disable the camera sound.

Ok, so record a video instead, then pick the desired frame later.

If we heard a sound every time Google voyeured their users ...

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