What makes an SLR an SLR anyway?
Before I get into the reasons why I favor SLRs, here’s a little background information for those of you who aren’t camera geeks: Many people think of SLRs as cameras with interchangeable lens systems, which most of them have, but an SLR is actually defined by its viewing system. Basically, it works like this: Light comes into the lens and hits a mirror, which in turn directs the rays to a focusing screen where the image is resolved. Then a prism between the focusing screen and the viewfinder eyepiece reverses the incoming image so that you can see it the right way around. When you take a picture, the mirror flips up so that the light goes straight through the lens to the sensor (or the film plane in a film camera). So why do I like SLRs? When I look into the viewfinder, I can see every little change in focus. And no matter how close to my subject I get, I don’t have to worry about my framing being off because of the parallax error that results from using a viewfinder that doesn’t look
