Hi, everybody. Welcome to Episode Six of the photography explained podcast. In this episode, what are the different types of camera?
I'm your host, Rick, and each week I'll try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes without the irrelevant details. My aim is to explain things in just enough detail to help us with our photography and no more.
What are the different types of camera then? Well, in the last episode, I answered the question posed by Mrs. M - do I really need a camera in 2020? The answer was it depends. And I explained my thoughts and reasonings behind that.
Okay, so what are the different types of cameras?
The different types of camera are
1 DLSR
First, is the DSLR, which I have helpfully annotated on my notes as DLSR. I am quite concerned - I can't even spell a basic term like that right!
DSLR is a digital single lens reflex camera.
Now what's a single lens reflex camera I hear you all shouting at your, well whatever device you're listening to this on? Very good question. And to answer that I need to go back in time to the days when we used to use this thing called film in cameras.
Yes, camera film.
SLRs were the cameras that tended to be used by professional photographers, there wasn't a huge number of other choices to be honest with you.
I will go into a lot more detail another time because it is it is quite important, really. But for the purposes of this episode, and without going into too much irrelevant detail.
An SLR is a camera where through mirrors, prisons, strings, and magic and elastic trickery, you look through the viewfinder, and what you are actually looking at is actually through the middle of the lens. Marvellous science.
So SLR is single lens reflex camera.
Film to digital
Now take the film out of the back, put a sensor in and (in very crude terms) you have a DSLR. Yep, a bit of an oversimplification. But that's the fundamental difference between the two.
So a DSLR (not the DLSR - I'll never live that one down - I should edit out really but I do not know how to edit audio and I'm not going to learn today).
So DSLR was the camera that pros tended to use. And that takes us on to the next type of camera I want to talk about which is a mirrorless camera.
What is a mirrorless camera??
If you are sat there scratching your head going, why is a camera called mirrorless, this is why. A DSLR/ SLR has a mirror in it, and a mirrorless camera doesn't. That's the difference.
If we're starting again from scratch now, SLR would be called I don't know what, but a mirrorless camera would be called, erm a camera.
So a mirrorless camera doesn't have a mirror. You don't look through the lens, you look through the viewfinder. And what you're looking at is an electronic viewfinder. Obviously, we have to abbreviate that down to a EVF because we can't summon up the energy use all the words.
Electronic viewfinders
So and EVF (transcript came up with EDF) is an electronic viewfinder. Electronic viewfinders these days are brilliant. They weren't great to start with. But the technology got to the point now where you virtually cannot tell the difference between the optical viewfinder of a DSLR and the EVF of a mirrorless camera.
Other cameras and compact cameras
These are often and wrongly called point and shoot cameras. They're generally the cheaper cameras with smaller sensors. You can still take great photos with them. But yeah, compact cameras - I don't know a great deal about and to be honest with you look on the internet for compact cameras and you'll see why I don't know a lot about them.
There's a lot of them.
So what else do we have?
Medium format cameras.
Now one of the big differentiating factors between different camera systems is the size of the sensor. I'll come on to this in a minute. A medium format camera has a bigger sensor than a DSLR. a DSLR has a bigger sensor than a mirrorless camera in general terms, although there are now many full frame mirrorless camera (so forget that that was wrong).
Medium format cameras are more high end professional cameras.
Large format camera
You can still get large format cameras with a very large film or sensor. The bigger the sensor the more specialist and expensive the camera is.
Other cameras
There's also a specialist cameras. You can get these incredibly clever 3D cameras that do 3D images, and even 360 degree images. And you can also get cameras that do 360 walkthroughs. I've recently looked at a camera call a Matterport. They cost about three grand, and are quite complicated to use, but they give you a 3d walkthrough of a building, which is pretty much amazing.
So what else do we have apart from these fancy things?
Oh, yeah, the phone. Now a phone used to be this thing for you youngsters who might not know this. Back in the day of mobile phones, when they first came out, you used a mobile phone to do one of two things. You either phoned people and spoke to them.
And the other thing you could do is text, nine keys on your phone to get to get your text content.
I'll stop there because I'm beginning to ramble here.
These days, the cameras on phones are fantastic. I have an iPhone XS, and it takes fantastic photos. But it's not replaced my DSLR or mirrorless camera. Okay, so these terms all seem a little bit strange. Let's not worry about those, let's concentrate on the main points about the different types of cameras.
My summary
In general terms, the bigger the sensor on the camera, the bigger and better the camera is, and the more expensive it is, and the more higher end it is, in very general terms
The smaller the sensor, the smaller the camera is, and the cheaper the camera is.
Disclaimer time
And I'll caveat this massively, the smaller the camera sensor is the less professional the camera is - not. I'll come on to different sensor types in a separate episode of the podcast.
Remember this (as Take That once said)
One thing I need to remember though, and one thing I want to say is, buy the best camera in the world doesn't guarantee you'll take the best photos in the world. You can buy a great camera and take rubbish photos.
You can also, well not with a rubbish camera, but with an average camera, if you know what you're doing, take great photos.
So a great camera doesn't equal great photos. A cheap camera doesn't equal rubbish photos.
Nearly there
I'm sure there's a few other types of cameras but this is the main ones I wanted to talk about. Very quickly before I move on to the ending. Obviously, as we're getting close to the ankles (yes that is what the transcript thought I said), I've only got 10 minutes.
What cameras do I use?
I've got a full frame DSLR that is a Canon 6D. This is my workhorse camera that I use for my architectural photography and construction photography work. It's a quite a basic, no frills camera. What it does though is it takes great photos day in day out and I love the sensor and the resolution on it.
I also have a mirrorless camera which is actually a Micro Four Thirds camera. I'll come on to that another time. It's an Olympus, EM5 Mk2. I use that for my travel photography because it’s a lot smaller, more compact and takes great photos.
One thing I will say here is that I used an Olympus EM1 which I was kindly loaned by Olympus on a commercial shoot and nobody noticed the difference so you can use a Micro Four Thirds camera commercially. I have proved this by doing it and being paid for the job.
Okay, that's this episode done. This was just a very quick explanation of the different types of camera. So what's next on the photography explain called podcast?
Which camera should I buy?
Having told you about the different types of cameras, I'm going to give you some thoughts about how you might choose your next camera regardless of what type it is.
Thank you
Thank you for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please leave a nice review and rating wherever you get your podcast from. And please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And if you could tell everyone you know about my podcast, that would be even better.
You can check out my website, Rick McEvoy Photography where you can find out all about me and my architectural and construction photography. And also my blog. Finally, let me know if there is photography thing you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Head over to my (Photography Explained Podcast) website, click on the tile. If I explain your thing, I'll give you a shout out on that episode. And the list is now live on the website for all to see.
This episode was brought to you by the power of Yorkshire tea. Yep, not a paid promotion. But that's the truth. I had a cup before I came on and it kept me going.
Thanks for listening. See you on the next episode. Cheers from me, Rick.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
camera, dslr, photography, mirrorless camera, episode, sensor, photos, phone, slr, medium format cameras, viewfinder, podcast, rick mcevoy, Olympus, electronic viewfinder