A DSLR by definition does not tell us if the camera has a mount for interchangeable lenses. The lens of a DSLR could be a fixed lens, right? Is there, or was there ever, such a camera? If not, why not?
I don't mean a "bridge camera" with a tunnel viewfinder or an electronic viewfinder. With DSLR camera I mean a digital camera with an optical path through the lens to a viewfinder with the help of a mirror inside the lightbox. The letter 'R' in SLR does not mean a moving kind of mirror, it may just as well be a pellicle/transparent/beam splitter type of fixed mirror.
Answer
You are correct, a DSLR can have a fixed lens and there actually was, the Olympus E-10 for example.
My guess is that there is little advantage to a fixed in a DSLR and obviously flexibility is lost, not to mention the high-cost of a large sensor which makes one want to reuse it with various lenses. The DSLR's mirror and pentaprism/pentamirror force the camera to be relatively large and the lens is usually correspondingly so.
The current trend is to get rid of the reflex mechanism in favor of size. This gave rise to the current crop of mirrorless cameras but also to fixed lens ones with APS-C or even full-frame sensors. With a camera like the Nikon Coolpix A which I reviewed here you have a very small camera that produces DSLR-like images with a fixed prime lens.
No comments:
Post a Comment