Federica Laricchia
Research expert covering the global consumer technology industry
DSLR and mirrorless cameras - statistics & facts
To take pictures or videos in our everyday life or during a trip, cameras currently play a major role. Cameras are devices used for capturing images as a single image to form a photograph or as a series of images to create a video. Traditional photography or filming involved a process where professionals with a particular set of skills captured images on a film roll and developed them into a photograph or a video through a chemical process. But today, cameras with film rolls, termed analog cameras, have almost entirely been replaced by digital cameras with electronic sensors, shifting the industry from analog to digital photography. These sensors continue to evolve in size, finding their way into smartphones, bringing in a new digital photography era in consumer electronics.
DSLR vs mirrorless cameras
Digital cameras are broadly divided into two categories: compact system cameras (CSC) and digital system cameras (DSC). Furthermore, digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) and mirrorless cameras have either a built-in lens or an interchangeable lens. Although DSLRs and mirrorless cameras both use interchangeable lenses, a significant difference between the two cameras is the presence of a mirror box in DSLRs. In a mirrorless camera, the live view of the subject is produced through an electronic display instead. Cameras with built-in lenses that once enjoyed a large share of the market are slowly being overtaken by cameras with interchangeable lenses. This trend is driven by the evolving affordability of digital camera technology and consumer demand for better cameras and interchangeable lens options to produce high-quality media content for digital platforms like YouTube.Camera manufacturers facing smartphone cameras
The improvement made on the capabilities of smartphone cameras, the price of which is likely to be similar to that of a good camera, caused a shift in consumer behavior, with consumers being more inclined to buy a new smartphone instead of a new camera. Consequently, new types of digital have been produced by some of the world's largest manufacturers of digital cameras. Particularly, this has led to a change in strategy towards product design, notably making cameras more user-friendly with the same creative control through the integration of technology such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) all while finding a sweet spot for pricing. Today, mirrorless cameras sell at almost two and a half times more than the price of a DSLR and are feature-rich in terms of software – no more is it a war of higher pixels. Many of the photographic equipment manufacturers are reducing the size of their photographic division: instead, they are investing more in profitable segments such as imaging technology, especially for medical and scientific applications.
