Why DSLR?

I have to assume that the OP is actually asking an honest question. It sounds like a simple answer would suffice but that just isn’t the case. Here’s my best answer and while it encompasses reasons already given by others in this thread, it focuses my thoughts to state it this way and I’m also giving examples for the OP to see.

The crux of the issue probably centers on expectations and experience. i.e. what do we users expect from our camera and photographs and what sort of experience do we expect from the process of taking photographs. This is not a case of where my expectations and experiences are necessarily better than the OP but it is true that in this case they are absolutely very much different.

Let’s say your goal is to capture a distant mountain or the kids standing with Mickey at Disneyworld. I agree that for garden variety output, a good quality P&S can take a high quality image…maybe an extremely high quality image. Given that, it is no surprise that in the right hands, P&S cameras…even cell phones…can produce exceptional photographs by almost any standards. If the discussion ends there, the OP is absolutely correct. Buying expensive SLRs and their costly siblings is a fool’s errand. But there are numerous valid reasons why that might not be so.

The most obvious differential is that dSLRs have interchangeable lenses. There is no do-all lens at any price that encompasses everything at the best quality. The best that can be said is that they are ‘good enough’ and for any one person they might very well be good enough. My bag of kit for my 35mm FF Sony a850 encompasses lenses with a range from a rectilinear 14 mm to 300mm. There is NO P&S that has that specific range equivalent and certainly not with that quality. I need to change that last focal length limitation but that will be an expensive and probably heavy jump.

The camera is just a tool. It might be a very subjective observation but unfortunately the typical P&S is a crude tool at best. To me most P&S feel cheap and flimsy personally…whether they are or not. There are some exceptions (the Canon G series instantly comes to mind) but overwhelmingly I believe that to be the case. dSLRs on the other hand start off on the low end with a certain substantial feel to them and they often impart a sense of elegance as they get more expensive. Leica wouldn’t sell cameras if this weren’t the case. Don’t dismiss or trivialize this fact. Substance might not be important to some but to many it is an important aspect of the photographic experience. While admittedly it adds nothing to the photograph, it adds tremendous experiential value to some of us. Apple has made a fortune making ‘tools’ that exude quality. Concerning the feel of a camera, a common thread topic here on the forums is ‘optical vs. electronic viewfinder’. To be honest I think the experiential aspect might be the overriding issue as opposed to the functional aspects of those viewfinders.

On a more sophisticated level, the ability to conveniently control the camera as a photographic tool sets the dSLRs vastly apart from their simplified distant P&S cousins. At the very least all photographers need to effortlessly control focus, aperture, shutter speed and ISO. On the P&S this is so effortless that it’s often difficult to over-ride many aspect of these critical function settings. One of the reasons I love the high-end NEX 7 mirrorless interchangeable lens camera is its Tri-Navi system. I consider it especially elegant and, in a way, a throwback to SLR film cameras. Controlling these functions is how we craft our photographs. Saying that the camera is doing a fine job is admitting that the camera is doing the decision making. And if you don’t know any better or don’t care…that’s a good thing.

One of the things we might want to do with our significantly larger sensor camera is to limit depth of field via the aperture. Larger apertures with larger sensors can isolate a portion of the image and cause the viewer to focus attention on a specific object or area. Admittedly here the simplified dark background is helping too but so is the OOF areas.

In a similar manor there must be elegant ways to both override and to control the specific distance that the camera is focusing on. In this case I didn’t want to focus on the background or the rock in front. Face recognition isn’t going to work here:)

Controlling shutter speed in many cases, combined with lens selection and image stabilization is the difference between total garbage camera shake blur and something usable. All of my example pictures were taken recently at Disneyworld and in this case I was in a moving tram bounding around so violently that in some cases I failed to even get large animals like giraffes and elephants in the frame. So I did everything possible to keep the shutter speed up to freeze the violent motion. Here’s a shot of some cheetahs…highly cropped on my a850... where I also kept my 70-300 G wide open to the point that depth of field is actually too shallow…The image was focused on the furthest cat and the closest one is getting fuzzy.

P&S cameras typically have small sensors. Good 'high ISO' and small sensors at our level of technology tend to be mutually exclusive. I know that some of the newer P&S cameras with small sensors tout very high ISO but the ensuing noise reduction incurs the loss of fine detail and, with all sensors, a dramatic loss of dynamic range. So here’s a nightmare shot. These male giant bats that are engaged in a territorial squabble are black, backlit and in dim lighting…and they are moving fairly rapidly at times. So I had to keep the ISO up and still try to retain detail and have enough dynamic rage to pull in everything from bright whites to very dark tones and still keep detail.

dSLRs are typically much , much, much more responsive then P&S. Great strides have been made in shutter responsiveness lately and now the best P&S are now virtually instantaneous but typically focus lags far behind and shot to shot can be glacial. Lots of times you can take the shot… but the screen is blanked out for a time afterwards. Here’s a real world scenario. I’m taking a shot of my grand kids with their Dad atDisneyworld when they are taking a quick breather. Three little kids 6, 5 and 2 wiggling around more interested in something…anything…else than posing for a picture and I want to get a good shot of all four. Snap, snap, snap, snap but I’m not going to do that with your average P&S. This shot is actually a composite of two of those snaps.

Last example; This is another shot bouncing along at max focal length of 300mm and cropped at 100% out of a 24MP image at 1250 ISO. Anyone sitting next to me with any P&S on the planet would not have gotten this exact Web only shot.

It doesn’t matter if you think these are great photographs. For me, it’s the process that is important and satisfying. I lugged around my Sony a850 with old Minolta 28-135 or KM 28-75 or Sony 70-300G all week except one day when I used my wife’s excellent little Canon s95. It takes beautiful pictures. But at the end of the day I found it so restricting in so many ways I was back to lugging around my heavy gear. There is a happy middle ground and Sony and other manufactures are attempting to fill it with the likes of the RX100, RX1 and the NEX camera line. All of which are small and light and relatively expensive but they offer functionality that typical P&Ss don’t have.

The very last reason to buy a dSLR might be because the photographer thinks its fashionable to own this expensive equipment or because they own it, the camera will ensure great photographs. That unfortunately encompasses more people than I care to admit. In that regard I think it’s valid to say ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’.

Bruce

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