Trying to explain "mirrorless" in plain English — what actually confuses beginners?
Someone asked me this last week and I realised most explanations start with pentaprisms and lose people immediately. The short version as I understand it: a DSLR bounces light off a mirror up into an optical viewfinder, and that mirror flips up when you press the shutter. A mirrorless camera skips that, sending light straight to the sensor and showing you its feed through the rear screen or an electronic viewfinder. That's basically it — same interchangeable lenses, one less moving part, and what you see in the EVF is close to the final image, so changing shutter speed, aperture or ISO shifts the brightness in front of your eyes.
The tradeoff I keep reading about is battery, since the screen is always on — DSLRs get thousands of shots per charge where mirrorless bodies get hundreds.
For those of you who teach or help beginners: which part of this do they actually get stuck on? My guess is the EVF feeling like "looking at a TV" rather than the mirror itself, but I'd like to hear what actually comes up.
---
Sources
