Why not call them DSLs?

[tbcass]

Instead of the wacky "mirrorless"?

Mirrorless sounds like "horseless" ... "horseless carriage."

SLR stands for single lens reflex (mirror).

DSLR stands for Digital SLR.

So DSL stands for Digital Single Lens. (no reflex.)

DSL is already taken in the internet world. I am fine with MILC; it aptly describes the system, I know exactly what it means as opposed to the confusion created in the “why call it single lens if it is actually interchangeable?”, and it can be shortened to just ILC or camera if the DSLR disappears in some future era.

Many acronyms have multiple meaning. So even though DSL is used for digital subscriber line that doesn't bother me. By the way, DSL may be gone in a few years when it is replaced by fiber optic lines as it is in our area.

So, I rather like DSL

DSL became obsolete where I live 20-25 years ago except in very rural areas where there is no cable or fiber optic.

 

[Carol T]

Really, I loved the term EVIL. Not because it was necessarily a good acronym, just because I loved the rebellious aspect of it in the very traditional and conservative camera community.

 

[Carol T]

Instead of the wacky "mirrorless"?

Mirrorless sounds like "horseless" ... "horseless carriage."

SLR stands for single lens reflex (mirror).

DSLR stands for Digital SLR.

So DSL stands for Digital Single Lens. (no reflex.)

DSL is already taken in the internet world. I am fine with MILC;

Certainly better than EVIL (electronic viewfinder, interchangeable lens).

it aptly describes the system, I know exactly what it means as opposed to the confusion created in the “why call it single lens if it is actually interchangeable?”, and it can be shortened to just ILC or camera if the DSLR disappears in some future era.

Nooooo!!! I loved EVIL!!! We need to bring it back lol.

 

[Carol T]

Instead of the wacky "mirrorless"?

Mirrorless sounds like "horseless" ... "horseless carriage."

SLR stands for single lens reflex (mirror).

DSLR stands for Digital SLR.

So DSL stands for Digital Single Lens. (no reflex.)

There is no authority that determines what we should call them. People put terms out there and in the end common usage settled down, as it does. You're perfectly free to put 'DSL' out there but I think that its chances of catching on at this late stage are very limited. There were better options than 'mirrorless' in play, but they've all gone. My favourite was 'EVIL' (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable lens) but that want by the wayside along with the clumsy 'MILC' (Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera).

EVIL was and still is my fave lol. And to me MILC is too much like 'milk' and even worse, 'MILF.'

 

[rurikw]

Phoneless interchangeable lens camera

Or just PC. Oh wait... PLC then.

 

[bobn2]

EVIL was and still is my fave lol. And to me MILC is too much like 'milk' and even worse, 'MILF.'

Given how invested some people here are in their cameras, maybe 'CILF' would be appropriate.

I suppose it would stand for 'Camera - Interchangeable Lens with Finder'

 

[AstigmaticOwl]

DSL already stands for Digital Subscriber Line

 

[ActionPhotoPassion]

Because Sony wanted to show off and play totally apart from the SLR world probably..? Oo

 

[Richard Butler]

Because Sony wanted to show off and play totally apart from the SLR world probably..? Oo

I'm not sure what Sony has to do with this. They were something like the fourth brand to release a mirrorless camera (interchangeable lens camera) and didn't use the term mirrorless.

Richard - dpreview.com

 

[ActionPhotoPassion]

Because Sony wanted to show off and play totally apart from the SLR world probably..? Oo

I'm not sure what Sony has to do with this. They were something like the fourth brand to release a mirrorless camera (interchangeable lens camera) and didn't use the term mirrorless.

Richard - dpreview.com

Hmmm complicated the case of Sony about mirrorless... Or not DSLR

I was sure they used the term mirrorless to ditch their A-mount FF DSLT though. But if I'm wrong, feel free to refresh my memories as to what was the expression for a nex for eg

 

[FrancoD]

Because Sony wanted to show off and play totally apart from the SLR world probably..? Oo

I haven't seen any evidence that Sony was the first brand to call them "mirrorless"

In fact I posted links to show that Sony called their first two "mirrorless" cameras :

"interchangeable lens Digital SLR camera"

DPReview referred to the Panasonic G1 (the first "mirrorless") as "the world's first electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens camera" and then "Olympus and Panasonic announced the new, mirrorless format / lens mount based on (and compatible with) Four Thirds in August 2008" however Panasonic avoided creating a new term by simply calling them Micro Four Thirds.

(the two posts above were posted as I was compiling this but I see Richard does agree with my point).

 

[Richard Butler]

Because Sony wanted to show off and play totally apart from the SLR world probably..? Oo

I'm not sure what Sony has to do with this. They were something like the fourth brand to release a mirrorless camera (interchangeable lens camera) and didn't use the term mirrorless.

Richard - dpreview.com

Hmmm complicated the case of Sony about mirrorless... Or not DSLR

I was sure they used the term mirrorless to ditch their A-mount FF DSLT though. But if I'm wrong, feel free to refresh my memories as to what was the expression for a nex for eg

It seems I've misremembered. Sony referred to the first NEXs as having 'mirrorless' construction (inverted commas theirs).

Richard - DPReview.com

 

[FrancoD]

Because Sony wanted to show off and play totally apart from the SLR world probably..? Oo

I'm not sure what Sony has to do with this. They were something like the fourth brand to release a mirrorless camera (interchangeable lens camera) and didn't use the term mirrorless.

Richard - dpreview.com

Hmmm complicated the case of Sony about mirrorless... Or not DSLR

I was sure they used the term mirrorless to ditch their A-mount FF DSLT though. But if I'm wrong, feel free to refresh my memories as to what was the expression for a nex for eg

It seems I've misremembered. Sony referred to the first NEXs as having 'mirrorless' construction (inverted commas theirs).

Richard - DPReview.com

Yes, but that was not the term used by Sony in their specs and DPReview already had used "mirrorless format" in the Pana G1 review the year before.

BTW, March 11,2004, Epson RD1 review :

Body type : rangefinder mirrorless

Loading…

www.dpreview.com

 

[Richard Butler]

Because Sony wanted to show off and play totally apart from the SLR world probably..? Oo

I haven't seen any evidence that Sony was the first brand to call them "mirrorless"

In fact I posted links to show that Sony called their first two "mirrorless" cameras :

"interchangeable lens Digital SLR camera"

DPReview referred to the Panasonic G1 (the first "mirrorless") as "the world's first electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens camera" and then "Olympus and Panasonic announced the new, mirrorless format / lens mount based on (and compatible with) Four Thirds in August 2008" however Panasonic avoided creating a new term by simply calling them Micro Four Thirds.

(the two posts above were posted as I was compiling this but I see Richard does agree with my point).

Yeah, we used the term 'mirrorless' for the announcement of the Micro Four Thirds format and it was established as our house style soon after. I'm not sure if that reference to evil was before we'd settled that or just Simon being playful.

But we settled on mirrorless as the least-bad name for mirrorless (interchangeable lens cameras) very early.

I completely understand the 'defining something by what it isn't' argument (which, to a degree, SLR also does), but it's less clumsy than 'compact system camera' given the Fujifilm GFX isn't especially compact, or anything with 'electronic viewfinder' in it, since they don't all have viewfinders in the conventional sense.

I'd rather live with a conveniently short term (irrespective of the apparent meaning if you try to treat it as an adjective) than find it hard to discuss viewfinders because we've collectively started calling rear display panels 'viewfinders,' too.

For better or worse, it's now the industry standard term (to the point that industry body CIPA uses it for its English translation).

Richard - DPReview.com

 

[Richard Butler]

Because Sony wanted to show off and play totally apart from the SLR world probably..? Oo

I'm not sure what Sony has to do with this. They were something like the fourth brand to release a mirrorless camera (interchangeable lens camera) and didn't use the term mirrorless.

Richard - dpreview.com

Hmmm complicated the case of Sony about mirrorless... Or not DSLR

I was sure they used the term mirrorless to ditch their A-mount FF DSLT though. But if I'm wrong, feel free to refresh my memories as to what was the expression for a nex for eg

It seems I've misremembered. Sony referred to the first NEXs as having 'mirrorless' construction (inverted commas theirs).

Richard - DPReview.com

Yes, but that was not the term used by Sony in their specs and DPReview already had used "mirrorless format" in the Pana G1 review the year before.

BTW, March 11,2004, Epson RD1 review :

Body type : rangefinder mirrorless

https://www.dpreview.com/products/epson/slrs/epson_rd1

That isn't what we would have called it at the time (and it's wrong, per our house style).

That's an oversight in a database update at some point, post G1 (we don't consider rangefinders to be mirrorless, nor 'rangefinder-style').

Update: looking back, my guess would be we crowbarred actual rangefinders into the rangefinder-style mirrorless category, so that we didn't need to add an extra category/icon to this search feature for only a handful of cameras:

https://www.dpreview.com/products/search/cameras#!

Note that category is represented by what's clearly an Olympus PEN.

Richard - DPReview.com

 

[FrancoD]

It was also used for the Epson RD 1X in 2009 : Rangefinder style

mirrorless.

https://www.dpreview.com/products/epson/slrs/epson_rd1x

(before the Sony NEX3 came out)

Im starting to think that DPReview was the one to popularize the term...

 

[Richard Butler]

It was also used for the Epson RD 1X in 2009 : Rangefinder style

mirrorless.

https://www.dpreview.com/products/epson/slrs/epson_rd1x

(before the Sony NEX3 came out)

Im starting to think that DPReview was the one to popularize the term...

We have done our best to use and popularize the term (right back to the announcement of Micro Four Thirds in 2008 - I know, because I remember writing the opening sentence of that news story).

But we didn't use it about the Epsons: as I say, that's a side-effect of a change we made to the database later. If I can track down when that tool was launched, I'll be able to pin-down when the change was made.

Bear in mind that Olympus, Panasonic and Samsung had all multiple mirrorless cameras on the market before the NEX-3.

Richard - DPReview.com

 

[Djehuty]

I just call them cameras. Only people who own them call them mirrorless, everyone else calls them cameras.

 

[Carol T]

EVIL was and still is my fave lol. And to me MILC is too much like 'milk' and even worse, 'MILF.'

Given how invested some people here are in their cameras, maybe 'CILF' would be appropriate.

I suppose it would stand for 'Camera - Interchangeable Lens with Finder'

lololol

Or CLIT: Camera, lens interchangeable, finder

 

[ActionPhotoPassion]

It was also used for the Epson RD 1X in 2009 : Rangefinder style

mirrorless.

https://www.dpreview.com/products/epson/slrs/epson_rd1x

(before the Sony NEX3 came out)

Im starting to think that DPReview was the one to popularize the term...

We have done our best to use and popularize the term (right back to the announcement of Micro Four Thirds in 2008 - I know, because I remember writing the opening sentence of that news story).

But we didn't use it about the Epsons: as I say, that's a side-effect of a change we made to the database later. If I can track down when that tool was launched, I'll be able to pin-down when the change was made.

Bear in mind that Olympus, Panasonic and Samsung had all multiple mirrorless cameras on the market before the NEX-3.

Richard - DPReview.com

Well that's quite an archeology here and I stand corrected. Very nice digging job hehe