SRT201

John Koerner, NOWHITELENS
Again, my point was not that DSLR's can't get around these issues. LiveView and Mirror Lockup do just that. The only point is that the mirrorless bodies have these advantages in all shooting situations.

I have no doubt you have both taken razor sharp photos with your rigs and in many cases the sharpness lost to mirror-slap or PDAF errors would be hard to see.

At least in my case, I'm only addressing the strict definition of image quality and sharpness is a big part of that so anything that increases sharpness in more situations is an improvement in design.

I'm no Sony fan boy nor am I suggesting that mirrorless is a replacement for all DSLR uses at this point.

We can talk sharpness all day but great photos often don't depend on that at all so this is a purely academic conversation. I'm an engineer so such conversations are fine with me. :-)

Sorry NOWHITELENS, but in the world of physics there is ALWAYS going to be some level of calibration error between the PDAF sensor's measured focus point and the real one. You don't have that source of error when the focus is being measured on the image plane.

BlueBomber,
You're really trying to stir things up aren't you by pointing out yet another physics problem in the DSLR's design. :-)

Having a focus sensor located someplace other than the imager means there is yet another inescapable source of image quality degradation inherent to the DSLR design. I have owned a number of DSLR's and experienced these error first hand. Again the DSLR manufacturers admit this by including a mode that actually allows the user to focus WITH the imager.

I'm no fanboy. I'm not arguing for a brand here just simply pointing out that there are inherent flaws in the DSLR design as there are in ALL DEVICES. Nothing is perfect. In this case though, the mirrorless cameras have overcome these two rather important flaws that effect image quality. Have millions of wonderful images been taken regardless of these flaws? Of course. Nobody is claiming otherwise.

Again!... just physics.

Nobody was suggesting you can't get a sharp image with your D800. But you'll note it includes a mirror lockup function does it not. Nikon themselves suggest that you are NOT getting the maximum sharpness in many situations due to vibration from mirror-slap. So they provide you the option of sharpER images should that work for a given shooting situation.

Mirrorless cameras have simply done away with that moving mass and so have the advantage of less camera-induced vibration in every shooting scenario.

Again it's just physics. I have no idea why people take this stuff personally.

Too bad Ricoh/Pentax missed the mirrorless boat. The sad part is that they didn't really miss the boat. They failed with the bizarre K-01 mirrorless (I have one) and then didn't have to stomach to continue forging into new territory.

I was a big fan for a long time but I think Pentax may be too far behind to recover the lost ground.

Physics says it matters. The mirror has far more mass than a shutter of any kind and the simultaneous goals of moving and stopping that mirror as quickly as possible and keeping the imager as stable as possible are in opposition. The simple fact is that if you want to keep the image as sharp as possible you must limit vibration aggressively. Sure, DSLR's have mirror-lockup but's really only useful for limited situations. The long and short of it is that for precise image sharpness mirror-less cameras have an immediate advantage. Physics won't be argued with.

John, of course there's probably a 100:1 ratio between DSLR and mirrorless awards. DSLR's have been around a lot longer. We're talking about image quality here, not artistry. Many great images don't depend on sharpness at all but that's another topic.

Great to see more and more viable Adobe alternatives in the field. Bathing in their hubris, Adobe won't figure out they've pushed customers too hard until they've permanently lost a huge chunk of the market.

Spoken like a true Facebook aficionado... The battle is over! Tiny imagers with noisy, smeared pixels are IN! Big imagers with DOF control, low noise, and wide dynamic range are OUT!

You heard it here. :-)

jimread,

Your points are well put and correct, but these "stupid tools" are all Adobe has to convince the customers that their perpetual subscriptions actual have some value.

Oooh that sounds really neato. Should be worth at least $60 or maybe $80 a month!

Better yet, why not ditch Adobe and that STOOOPID import step completely. There are a growing number of catalog-free alternatives that can actually work on existing files without having to go through some laborious catalog building step first.

Why should they bother to update important features like that. They already have you on the hook and they don't really care to take all the time to make real changes to their applications. The only way to get Adobe to change is to leave them. Fortunately their arrogance has opened the field to a number of very nice alternatives. Look around and ask why you're paying monthly for this kind of "performance".

Couldn't agree more. Adobe can continue to court customers with cheesy new features but they have driven away a solid portion of their user base with heavy handed "we own the customer" business practices. None of this silly garbage is going to lure me back. Oooh how about a feature that automatically adds fun hats to everyone in the photo! :-)

All reasoned responses, but that's the problem. The comment you are all replying to is from a serial troll who will not be reasoned with.

https://www.dpreview.com/members/9056066929/overview

You guys are wasting keystrokes replying to a troll who likes to put his or her insecurity on parade.

I found him easily understandable. On top of that, his English is far better than my Hindi. :-)

That's overall revenue. Could be they are seeing slower adoption rates or falling subscription numbers for Lightroom.

Or, I'm just wrong. :-)

Check out ON1 Photo Raw as well. I'm quite pleased with the results. Not missing Adobe at all.

Oh that's just precious isn't it! Adobe is finally noticing that their heavy-handed licensing and general disdain for the user is effecting their bottom line. Well now we can be sure that they are well and truly interested in giving users what they have been asking for.

Yeah right!

Adobe's arrogance has provided the opportunity for a number of good RAW development alternatives to emerge and some of them are excellent and MUCH faster than Adobe products. I've moved away from Adobe as have so many others.

Arrogance eventually comes back to bite the arrogant. Enjoy the rewards Adobe!

Really unfortunate. I could always count on Lexar for quality and speed. Sandisk... not so much.