What is your reason? What is the value of your reason in communication about cameras?
I say for many it's just to try and slip some other type of camera into a group where it does not belong. They have no faith in their new design so call it a different design. If the design is any good in it's category it can stand on it's own. Calling it a DSLR won't save it if it's not good enough. And most certainly what is a DSLR is well known, even Sony may know what it is.
Walt
Anyway there was one guy who kept making new threads about the subject, talking about how the fact that an LCD screen is in his opinion a "reflection" of what the main taking lens sees, which means (to him) that the NEX or Panny GH cams could be considered DLSRs.
I don't agree at all, in fact there were two significant flaws with those arguments(and many smaller flaws). Consider:
D - Digital
S - Single
L - Lens
R - Reflex
"Digital" is relatively new and denotes a subset of all SLRs. Let's take a closer look at "SLR".
"SL" simply means that composition and capture occur through a single lens, "R" means the image is reflected into a viewfinder -- as opposed to the typical rangefinder/TLR cameras that were common when the term "SLR" was coined. At that time, the distinction between all other cameras and the SLR was this reflected view through the taking lens.
Other cameras that were not SLRs allowed the photographer to view the subject through the taking lens, but without reflecting the image. These have their own name, the most generic that I am aware of is "view camera" though I seem to recall variations on the view camera that have their own name.
Other cameras that were not SLRs reflected the light that the photographer used for composition, but did not use a single lens for composition/capture. TLRs are the only examples of this that come to mind but if someone can think of a non-TLR example please correct me.
Other cameras that did not allow composition through the taking lens and did not reflect the view in any way were for a time the most common and cheapest, with the obvious exception of rangefinder cameras which tended toward the higher end. I think that it is this nondescript morass of mediocre cameras that best fits the P&S cams of today; there really is very little to distinguish them technically. Maybe some fear that Non-DSLR non-rangefinders will be unfairly lumped into this category(as if that matters in the first place).
There is nothing in the "SLR/DSLR" terminology that indicates interchangeable lenses. There are many SLRs that do not have interchangeable lenses. Consider the Minolta MK 1 110 Zoom SLR. No interchangeable lens. The Olympus IS-1 was a classic example of an SLR without interchangeable lenses(Oly called the ZLR or Zoom Lens Reflex but later reverted to SLR).
I found it funny that part of the conversation about calling NEX/GH cams "DSLR" cameras revolved around the idea that those cameras having interchangeable lenses meant that they were SLRs. On that basis, we would be calling Leica rangefinders, view cameras, even interchangeable-lens TLRs "SLRs".
I was amused by all this but the post had grown too large to be worth responding to.
It seems to me that people with EVF cams and NEX-like cams who want to have an identity that inicates they are not among the P&S masses should come up with a name for such cameras. EVIL is descriptive but will never gain traction with manufacturers for obvious reasons. And, to be fair, the NEX doesn't really have a VF, it has a screen so EVIL doesn't apply.
I for one really don't give a damn what they decide to call them, as long as they don't call them DSLRs. Not because I want to "protect" my camera from dilution of an acronym, but because it's simply not accurate.
