Landscapes

How much longer will the hills be alive to the sound of DSLR mirrors locking up?

YOU DON’T tend to see many landscape pros using mirrorless cameras, and the same goes for their enthusiast fans. There are various reasons for this. Landscape and travel veteran David Noton says: ‘I prefer not to have a poor-quality TV screen between the subject and me. What’s more, I like to really look into the composition through an optical viewfinder, without necessarily having to turn the camera on. I’m also worried about speed of focusing and battery consumption.’

Mirrorless myths dispelled

Yet there are several well-regarded landscape professional photographers who have made the change to mirrorless and never looked back. Olympus shooter and course leader Steve Gosling is a good example. ‘The first thing to say is that I have no problem going from a full-frame Canon EOS 5D Mark II to an Olympus OM-D,’ he says. ‘I’ve made prints up to 30x20in from the Olympus without any problem. People come to my courses and say: “I’ve been thinking about mirrorless, but how can I shoot landscapes with such a small sensor?” I ask them how big they print, and they usually say A3 or A3-plus. I chuckle, as the OM-D system can easily do that. There are a lot of misconceptions.’