THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO… Mirrorless cameras

For several decades, when you wanted a ‘serious’ or ‘proper’ camera, there was one place to turn: the SLR (single-lens reflex), followed closely by the DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) when the market turned away from analogue and towards digital.

In 2009, things started to change when the first ‘mirrorless’ camera came along in the shape of the Panasonic G1. In the intervening 10-and-a-bit years, the camera market became almost unrecognisable compared to what it once was. Just to be clear – although technically any camera without a mirror could be classed as ‘mirrorless’ (including phones and compact cameras), this name generally refers to interchangeable lens cameras.

While DSLRs still very much do exist and make up the bulk of the market, the future is almost definitely headed towards a complete domination by devices that do away with traditional camera construction. If you take a look