All is not perfect in digital SLR land.
- Lack of superwide lenses. Unless you own a full-frame dSLR, your digital’s focal length multiplication factor must be figured in to calculate the true coverage of the lens. It’s nice to have a 200mm lens magically transformed into a 300mm telephoto, but it’s not so great when you discover that your 20mm wide angle is now an ordinary 30mm lens that barely qualifies for the wide-angle designation. To get true wide-angle coverage, you’ll need a prime (non-zoom) or zoom lens that starts at 17-18mm. Superwide lenses are more expensive and harder to find. When I added a digital camera body to my film camera kit, my widest existing compatible lens was a favored 16mm semi-fish-eye lens that was the equivalent of a 24mm optic on my new digital SLR. Many digital camera owners have success using similar fish-eye lenses, and then “defishing” the finished pictures to correct for the distortion and produce a conventional wide-angle view. I ended up going a different route and buying a 12mm-24mm zoom (for $1,000-about the same as my dSLR body) to get an 18mm to 36mm (equivalent) viewpoint.
- No LCD preview or composing. Not a problem with through-the-lens viewing, you think? Your SLR view is totally black, yet some non-dSLR camera’s LCDs show a dim, serviceable image under such conditions. Some non-dSLRs with swiveling lenses automatically invert the image on the LCD so you can point the camera at yourself and still preview the image you’re about to take.
- Dirt and dust. Make no mistake, if you change lenses at all your digital SLR will eventually accumulate dust specks on the sensor that you’ll have to remove. Oddly, this drawback of the digital SLR is rarely discussed by vendors, yet it’s the most common problem a dSLR owner is likely to encounter. Your dSLR is going to be much larger and weigh more than whatever point-and-shoot digital camera you may be used to.
- Size, weight, and general clunkiness. Your dSLR is going to be much larger and weigh more than whatever point-and-shoot digital camera you may be used to.
- You can’t shoot movies with a dSLR.I actually took some nice sound movies of my son’s acting debut in West Side Story using a 5MP point-and-shoot digital that could make 640 × 480 videos at 30 frames per second. Because of the way dSLRs operate, movies are beyond their capabilities.
Some of the advantages of dSLRs are more closely related to the digital single lens reflex design.
- Better lenses. You might argue that a non-dSLR eliminates the need for interchangeable lenses. If your 12X zoom EVF camera offers all the focal length equivalents between 28mm and 336mm, who in their right mind (other than architectural photographers at the wide end, and pro sports photographers at the tele end) would need more? However, I maintain that even if you super glue your lens to a dSLR (transforming it into a noninterchangeable lens camera), the dSLR’s zoom lens will provide better, sharper pictures than what you can expect from a non-dSLR’s optics.There’s plenty of room for argument here, but, in general, it’s easier to design a high quality lens for an SLR’s larger sensor than it is for a tiny point-and-shoot’s CCD.
- Easier upgrading. Conversely, you don’t have to load down your camera with features you don’t need. As I write this, only a few non-dSLRs offer image stabilization (which minimizes blur caused by camera movement at low shutter speeds). If you want that feature in a non-dSLR, you have to specifically purchase a camera that offers it. (At the time I’m writing this, the Konica Minolta 7D is the only dSLR with anti-shake technology built into the camera body itself.) A more powerful external flash is an easy addition, too, compared with point-and-shoot digital cameras, many of which allow no external flash at all (other than slaved units).
- Better use of power. You’ll find that your dSLR camera’s battery will last much longer than you expect. Most digital SLRs switch off their autofocus and autoexposure systems automatically if you haven’t used them for a few seconds, and the power-hungry LCD is on only during picture review or menu navigation. You can leave a dSLR switched on for days on end without depleting your batteries. A non-dSLR with an optical viewfinder is guaranteed to chop off heads, or worse, as you compose your pictures.
- True “what you see is what you get” composition. A non-dSLR with an optical viewfinder is guaranteed to chop off heads, or worse, as you compose your pictures. The LCD on the back of the camera provides a reasonable facsimile of what the sensor sees, except you can’t see it in bright light, and the details on an LCD that can be as small as 1.5 inches are too small anyway.
