Back in 2008, the Canon 5D Mark II blew everyone’s minds with its ability to shoot both full frame 21MP stills and 1080p video. Best of all, it allowed us to use prime lenses to get a sweet shallow depth of field for that cinematic look – something consumer video cameras with their small sensors could never give us up until that point.
But ever since endowing us with true hybrid shooting abilities, many camera manufacturers have been dragging their feet by arbitrarily crippling their DSLR and Mirrorless video modes to make them almost awesome – but not awesome enough to cannibalise their sales of dedicated ‘prosumer’ video cameras. Until recently, this crippling pained us with omitting things such as full frame 4K, high frame rates, professional video file formats and importantly, the ability to switch between stills and film rapidly and seamlessly.
So why finally give us the full pie? Apart from faster processors, a few other things helped usher in this latest generation of hybrid cameras. Smartphones hybrid capabilities have killed the profitability in the lower end consumer market. Also, upstarts like Sony and Panasonic stepped into the fray with amazing hybrid mirrorless models. The result was that by the mid 2010s, competition was heating up.
This brings us to the current generation of mirrorless cameras that are endowed with a bunch of innovative inclusions such as body combination
