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Photographic-speak

ichael Topham's overview of the new Sony Alpha 7R IV (AP 3 August) raises some issues about the obscure language and ideas we use in photography, much of it rooted in history. A mirorless camera? Why not call my motor car a horseless carriage? No cameras had mirrors before the 1970s when a heavy swinging mechanical device was invented to give a view through the lens because you could not move the film. Now that digital viewfinders have vastly improved they are simply redundant. He talks about an APS-C crop mode, but what does that mean? What he describes is actually a digital zoom, but this expression became a