Ur welcome. I've happily joined the army of shills for Adobe and the rest of the photography industry. I feel the whore that I've become by losing my independence of thought for pay. I signed a contract that swears me never to mention a single word that casts doubt on the superiority of any photography gear and software. Further, in line with the political correctness demanded in the commercial culture of today's photography, I will always without fail use the word "creative" to apply to any piece of photography gear or software, despite the fact that human creativity originates from the expression of human activity, not from, say, a tripod or a filter. As well, I have set aside my critical outlook in favor of saying untrue things, such as, “Every photograph tells a story,“ even though photography functions as a wordless medium of human expression, as part of the visual arts. So I no longer have to strive to take worthy photographs, only talk about doing so in glowing terms to ensure a paycheck. The quest for money, I have discovered, painlessly papers over the economic bias now influencing my behavior in the realm of photography. Being a sock-puppet for photography suits me. After all, I may still use my other hand to reach in my pocket for my shill-earned cash. Better yet, I may now refer to myself as a professional photographer because I receive money for doing photography, never mind my photography skill level. Okay, I have to go: It’s the Adobe payroll department calling me, again.

As was said, a DSLR is named that BECAUSE it has aparatus inside which bounces what the lens is seeing, up off of two mirrors, out the viewfinder, and into your eye. (think periscope)

The mirrorless camera doesn't have this aparatus, nor do they (as far as I know) have a "focal plane" shutter...they have a "leaf" shutter, which works like the aperture blades in your DSLR.

That means the following:

1.) Without the mirror the camera can be smaller.

2.) Without the mirror having to "get out of the way" when you take a shot, you don't get the inherent vibration or "mirror slap" that people talk about...and you can hand-hold pictures to very low shutter speeds which means that you can take images in lower light.

3.) Without the mirror the flash sync speed is almost unlimited...up to 1/1000 generally and I've seen shots and take them up to 1/4000!

This means that (since shutter speed controls the amount of ambient light) you can effectively kill the ambient light in a flash photograph...aka...make daylight look almost like night. That also means that your speedlights are more powerful because you can "dial back" the amount of room light that they have to overcome.


One negative that you've seen mentioned is the lack of a view finder (much of the time) Some camera's actually have a pretty nice viewfinder; the X100S is one of them...a very nice little camera with a very nice viewfinder. You can buy an electronic viewfinder for mirrorless cameras but it's a different experience if you're used to "looking through the lens" in a DSLR.

Those are the big differences that I see....there are LOTS of mirrorless cameras to choose from.

This debate goes on and on. Here is an example of why I shoot in RAW. I love the long lens on the SX50 but when I go above ISO 300, the picture becomes soft until around ISO 800 where there is noise to be dealt with.

In this example, it was taken at full telephoto (just optical zoom), ISO 80, 1/200 shutter, and f/8. F/8 seems to be the sweet spot of the SX50's lens at full telephoto. I find that I get much better results if I take a photo at a lower ISO and adjust the exposure of the RAW photo. The JPG from the adjusted RAW file is on the left and the camera processed JPG is on the right.

Betcha it doesn't have the latest Nvidia driver and computers come not tweaked for optimum performance but optimum compatibility (lowest common denominator).

Manufacturers do not want product returns so they make them "work" to satisfy as broad a base of people as they can. Doesn't make geeks happy but satisfies the common masses.

Here's mine from an AMD Phenom II X6 Black 1100T Unlocked processor with 6 core 3.3 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, 240GB SSD, and a Nvidia FeForce GTS450 vid card.

Mine is tweaked and adjusted for max performance but is not the latest and greatest hardware - couple years old but still works faster than this old man can think...

Check your drivers and google for Windows 7 tweaks; if and only if your competent to make system changes, otherwise . . .