Mirrorless, the Minivan of Cameras

Once upon a time, every man in the kingdom had a closet full of cameras. At the bottom of the closet was a rangefinder, and stacked on top of that were SLRs and lenses, older DSLRs and lenses, and even a few compact cameras. The men's current cameras, the huge Megapixel-slaying DSLR wouldn't even fit in the closet, but that was okay because it was usually hung around their necks, or at least in a giant bag on their backs. 

You would think that this would have brought joy to the Camera Makers, as their male customer was devoted and pretty much bought every new version they made. But the Camera Makers weren't happy. Once every man had his camera, updates didn't grow their sales, they just keep them level. So the Camera Makers looked around and noticed that women didn't seem to have many cameras. If they did, they were small and fit in their purses.

Thus, the Camera Makers set out to increase their sales by selling something new to these women. The new cameras had to be better in some way than the compact cameras already stuffed in some of those purses, but not too big to stuff in a purse. And thus mirrorless was born. The era of white, red, and pink cameras began, with every Camera Maker eventually offering their interpretation of fashionably small cameras. 

But the men were jealous, and had tired necks and backs. "Why can't we enjoy these smaller, competent cameras?" they asked. And so the Camera Makers also made black and sometimes sliver versions. A few ambitious Camera Makers even went so far as to make models that were for all intents and purposes smaller versions of their bigger cameras. And so great joy descended upon the kingdom.

Until one day the men read that they were buying women's cameras, which was decidedly unmanly and lowered their self-imposed macho scores considerably. So some men rebelled and bought cameras with more. More pixels, more sensor, more options, more video, more…well, they wanted everything and the Camera Makers began obliging with Beasts of DSLRs. 

In the end, though, the necks and backs stayed tired. As the men grew older, they demanded "more in less." And so the men began looking more seriously at the smaller mirrorless cameras their women favored. And the Camera Makers eventually realized that men wanted smaller and lighter offerings, too, and obliged with manly mirrorless cameras. 

So everyone lived happily ever after.

Or not. 

Not all fairy tales have happy endings, and not all such stories can stand alone, except perhaps as allegory. For even as the men, women, and Camera Makers were rejoicing about finding their happy mediums, their lurked another danger at the edge of the kingdom, the Workflow Dragon. No one had slain this beast, and as it networked with other Dragons and formed what looked to be unbreakable social bonds, the cameras and the Camera Makers had no answer, thus the men and women of the kingdom were slain. Unless, of course, they had a smartphone.  

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DSLRS: dslrbodies.com | general: bythom.com| Z System: zsystemuser.com | film SLR: filmbodies.com

sansmirror: all text and original images © 2024 Thom Hogan
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