pdsilen wrote:
We've all spent hundres of dollars on our equipment. So have I. And I'm satisfied with the results. I don't see any reason to blow hundreds more dollars on new gagdetry. With the mirrorless cameras my biggest concern are two factors. They haven't been on the market long enough to prove their reliability in the long haul. Secondly with the mirrorless camera the sensor is exposed and prone to damage. So. Here's to the old addage, "If it aint broke, don't fix it."
You are correct in not seeing a reason to change, if you're satisfied with the results.
That said... I've been using mirrorless cameras since 2015 (two Micro 4/3 Panasonic Lumix GH4s). I have had zero problems with them. One of my bodies is nearing a shutter count of 150,000. It would be double or triple that, if it counted electronic shutter clicks along with mechanical shutter clicks.
Counter-intuitively, the exposed sensor is only an issue if you let it be by changing lenses in a dusty environment with lots of air movement. Otherwise, most of the time, it's a non-issue. I've had to clean my sensors one tenth as often as the Canons and Nikons I used from 2003 to 2012. But I change my lenses far more often (almost always in still, clean air, with the camera body pointed DOWN). And I always keep a body cap or lens on the camera. I have always done that with every SLR, dSLR, and MILC since 1968.
EVERYTHING in that part of a camera behind the lens needs to stay pristine and clean. I learned that in the late 1960s from a working pro with six Nikon F bodies. He had damaged two of them by dropping them in his bag without body caps or lenses. After that, he bought several spare caps and kept them in a clean pouch under the lid of his bag.
Why has sensor dust not been an issue? It's because there is no flippy-floppy mirror, with its lubricants and foam dampening pads, to kick bits of those substances around the mirror chamber and onto the sensor cover glass. With little air movement in a mirrorless camera, and fewer moving parts to wear and deteriorate, the sensor stays cleaner. The worst things that can get on a sensor are lubricants and foam from the mirror dampening strips in a dSLR. They stick on, and must be removed with a special foam swab and solvent (pure methanol, such as Eclipse fluid from Photosol, on their Sensor Swabs).
When I was a training developer in the school portrait business, I worked for the same guy who ran the equipment sales department. We put hundreds of Canon dSLRs in our territories all over the country. Those photographers used them in parts of a special rig that never came apart unless something needed service or end-of-season cleaning. The lenses never came off in the field! Yet the sensors got dirty, just from use — about 440 exposures per day, per camera body, four to five days a week, for 13 weeks each Fall.
Even my training rig, that I used only when I was training new photographers, got dirty every few thousand clicks. I kept a Giottos Rocket Air blower bulb, Sensor Swabs, and Eclipse fluid with me at all times. (I still do, but the swabs and fluid have been used only twice since 2015.) (We used a 28-75mm zoom lens that worked for all our common products. It stayed on the camera.)
Another thing to note about mirrorless cameras is that the state of the art in camera and lens manufacturing has advanced far beyond what it was just ten years ago. Cameras are made in factories that meet various ISO standards for quality control and best manufacturing practices. They are engineered with the aid of computers, using very sophisticated software unavailable before the turn of the century. They are made by companies with decades of experience and knowledge in optics and electronics. Most important, they have a lot fewer moving parts to wear and break down.
Some of the best photojournalists in the world are using mirrorless cameras now. They rely on them to work every day under difficult conditions. Just ask Gerald Williams (gwilliams6 here on UHH) about his Sonys. He loves 'em.