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Xysterz
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p.1 #1 · Changes

Returning to the hobby after a very long hiatus. I'm a Nikon guy, and I sort of fell off when when the D4 was released. I've come back to what seems like a different world! Everyone seems to be going mirrorless and video. What have been some of the most notable changes you all have seen over the last decade or so, and how have you all shifted your photography? I see some amazing photos posted here!

Mar 14, 2026 at 11:19 PM

CharleyL
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p.1 #2 · Changes

Having replaced my 3 main cameras just before the "mirrorless" became the thing, I am still using two Canon 77D, and one Canon 90D, and I have 8 lenses to choose from that fit and work on all of them well. I have owned all of the major camera brands over the last 60 years and today's major brands are all good, but the Canon models that I have, just seem to fit me and my ways better than anything that I have owned and used before.

My last Nikon was a D4. Actually your D4, at 16 megapixels, is about equal to a 35 mm film camera. So you really don't need more megapixels, unless you plan on making significant enlargements. 26 years ago I had a Sony Mavica MVC-FD98 camera with 2.1 megapixels and I could get very detailed good quality enlargements up to 8 X 10" with it. So I wouldn't rush to buy a new camera. Just use what you have until you figure out what you want to upgrade to. Megapixels shouldn't be a deciding factor in your decision, as all of the better brand new cameras seem to have more megapixel capability today than really needed, unless you plan on making some very big enlargements. Also, keep in mind that not everyone likes their mirrorless cameras and many are going back to DSLRs. I will likely buy a mirrorless camera, but it won't be this year. My retirement budget isn't big enough for a new camera now.

I bought the two Canon 77D to have two identical cameras and used one with a 24-70 mm lens and the other with a 70-300 mm lens for doing wedding shoots, but I only did two weddings before giving up on weddings. At 84, I'm just not as agile and don't move quick enough to catch the better shots at weddings any more. My 90D Canon camera sees most of it's use in my "out of control" home studio, which I finally built for myself 6 years ago in a former 19 X 26' master bedroom suite upstairs in my home. It has a double bath and a walk-in closet for my gear. The large hallway at the top of the stairs is the hair/makeup, and break area, but after getting the refreshments we all seem to end up in the middle of the shooting room. We live in the master bedroom suite and rest of the house downstairs.

For all my adult life I have wanted to have my own photo studio, but rented, used a theater stage with the curtains drawn, or just pushed all of my living room furniture aside and used it for my studio. I was once the stage manager for that Off Broadway Theater. About 50% of my hallway closet became my gear storage back then, and all had to go back in there after just a couple of hours, so the kids could watch their shows on the TV again.

Now fully retired, but still loving photography, it is what I do to stay busy and out of my wife's way most of every day. I mostly experiment with light now, doing still life and product type shoots, but I take portraits of family and close friends when I can get them to pose for me, and I don't charge for this any more, but a donation to help cover printing costs is never refused.

Having a studio of my own lets me leave a setup one day and come back to finish the shoot another day, picking up right where I left off. I don't need to break up and put away anything now. My studio is set up with a 6 backdrop motorized roller system, and a ceiling grid to allow me to attach lighting or anything else in the shooting area just below the 8' ceiling. I have 8 LED light panels up there for making videos, and can leave them in place while doing portrait, still life, and product shoots with lights, soft boxes on light stands, etc below. With the power on the ceiling and a minimum of light stands on my studio floor there are very few trip hazards in my studio. My tether cable drops from the ceiling grid in about the center of where I use my camera, with enough slack to let me move most anywhere in that half of the studio. The USB end drops down the back wall of my studio to the computer table where my laptop usually resides. I have a 60" Flat Screen TV on the wall above my computer that is set up to display every photo taken as it is entered into my computer. This TV faces the subject/model, so they can see themselves in each shot taken. They improve poses rapidly when they can see each shot taken.

There are power strips with electric outlets on the ceiling, so power for the lights is available within 5' of anywhere I wish to place a light, on the ceiling grid or below on a light stand. I have wireless control of all of the photo and video lights, so I can turn them on or off via wireless remotes at each of my camera stands/tripods, so don't need to climb a ladder for this. All of this remote power control capability came from Amazon at very reasonable prices. I still use the center ceiling light, but it's my work light now, and I have wireless switches for turning it on and off at the original doorway location, as well as each camera stand, my computer table, and a wheeled toolbox that I keep just left of me when doing a shoot. The bottom of this toolbox holds my gaffer tools and the top is where I place my camera when using it hand held and wish to take a break.

Charley

Mar 23, 2026 at 11:56 AM

snegron7
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p.1 #3 · Changes

Sold my Nikon D750 and Canon 6dmk2. I went mirrorless with an R6, R6II, R7, Sony A7c, A7iv. There are only three things I like more about mirrorless over dslr's;

1. AF tracking is amazing!
2. Canon's EF/RF adapter lets me use all my old EF lenses without an issue.

3. Sony cameras (at least the A7iv) feels like a plastic toy compared to the dslr's of the old days.

What I don't like about mirrorless;

- Not many 3rd party choices in full frame RF mount (AF).

- Nikon's F/Z mount adapter is an afterthought, and had to sell most of my AF-D lenses because they would be useless on a new Z body. Not only did I sell my AF-D lenses, but my D750 as well. I used the money to buy into Sony.

Mar 23, 2026 at 08:54 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #4 · Changes

Xysterz wrote:
Returning to the hobby after a very long hiatus. I'm a Nikon guy, and I sort of fell off when when the D4 was released. I've come back to what seems like a different world! Everyone seems to be going mirrorless and video. What have been some of the most notable changes you all have seen over the last decade or so, and how have you all shifted your photography? I see some amazing photos posted here!

Mirrorless is definitely the big change. Along with this, optical quality has generally increased a lot as well. There are also some interesting zoom ranges available now. Or very fast lenses that previously never existed, such as 14mm f/1.4 for full frame. Lenses are also smaller in mirrorless versions than previous SLR mount designs. Part of this is possible because a lot of lenses, especially wide angle lenses, now have very strong uncorrected optical distortion that requires software correction. Because the viewfinder image with mirrorless cameras is an electronic feed off the sensor, mirrorless cameras automatically apply the required software corrections for viewing/composing, which will also be 'baked in' to straight out of camera jpeg files. RAW files in third party software, such as Adobe Lightroom, can be processed without the corrections, if desired. But most of the time this probably won't be desirable due to how strong the distortion is with some wide angle lenses.

AF performance now is also extremely powerful. For example, cameras can recognize people in the scene and immediately lock in on a face and/or the eyes, and follow the subject around the frame while keeping them in focus at frame rates much higher than ever possible with DSLRs. Same applies to animal/bird recognition, vehicles, etc. Whereas with DSLRs I was frequently a centre-point AF user because the peripheral points were less reliable, I now very much rely on subject/face/eye detection and tracking capability that generally is very reliable, even shooting with fast lenses wide open and the subject well off-centre.

Back ~15+ years ago 'kit' lenses were generally to be avoided. This isn't really the case any longer. Even the cheap zooms and primes are now optically very good compared to what you used to get for that price range. But you will notice that the lower end, lower cost zooms are all very slow, often slower than f/5.6 because mirrorless AF does not have the general f/5.6 cutoff limitation that DSLR AF systems had. With the slow lenses you do get smaller, lighter lenses and high ISO performance of current cameras is generally very good, so the lack of lens speed is less of a deficit than it used to be. Additionally, if you're willing to do a RAW workflow, you can take advantage of current "AI" noise reduction that in many cases can truly make an ISO 6400 image look like it was ISO 200. Yes, AI noise reduction can 'make up' details that it thinks should be there and might sometimes be off, but the more 'real' information you can capture in an image, the better the AI does with noise reduction.

You may also want to get a current computer system. If you're an Apple user, Apple's silicon brought major performance improvements over previous Intel systems. If you haven't updated in a long time, I'd strongly suggest doing so, especially to take advantage of many of the more advanced processing tasks now available, such as 'smart' masks that can instantly select specific areas in an image, such as people, faces, sky, etc., for separate adjustments.

Mar 24, 2026 at 01:56 PM

Xysterz
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p.1 #5 · Changes

CharleyL wrote:
Having replaced my 3 main cameras just before the "mirrorless" became the thing, I am still using two Canon 77D, and one Canon 90D, and I have 8 lenses to choose from that fit and work on all of them well. I have owned all of the major camera brands over the last 60 years and today's major brands are all good, but the Canon models that I have, just seem to fit me and my ways better than anything that I have owned and used before.

My last Nikon was a D4. Actually your D4, at 16 megapixels, is about equal to a 35 mm film camera. So you really don't need more megapixels, unless you plan on making significant enlargements. 26 years ago I had a Sony Mavica MVC-FD98 camera with 2.1 megapixels and I could get very detailed good quality enlargements up to 8 X 10" with it. So I wouldn't rush to buy a new camera. Just use what you have until you figure out what you want to upgrade to. Megapixels shouldn't be a deciding factor in your decision, as all of the better brand new cameras seem to have more megapixel capability today than really needed, unless you plan on making some very big enlargements. Also, keep in mind that not everyone likes their mirrorless cameras and many are going back to DSLRs. I will likely buy a mirrorless camera, but it won't be this year. My retirement budget isn't big enough for a new camera now.

I bought the two Canon 77D to have two identical cameras and used one with a 24-70 mm lens and the other with a 70-300 mm lens for doing wedding shoots, but I only did two weddings before giving up on weddings. At 84, I'm just not as agile and don't move quick enough to catch the better shots at weddings any more. My 90D Canon camera sees most of it's use in my "out of control" home studio, which I finally built for myself 6 years ago in a former 19 X 26' master bedroom suite upstairs in my home. It has a double bath and a walk-in closet for my gear. The large hallway at the top of the stairs is the hair/makeup, and break area, but after getting the refreshments we all seem to end up in the middle of the shooting room. We live in the master bedroom suite and rest of the house downstairs.

For all my adult life I have wanted to have my own photo studio, but rented, used a theater stage with the curtains drawn, or just pushed all of my living room furniture aside and used it for my studio. I was once the stage manager for that Off Broadway Theater. About 50% of my hallway closet became my gear storage back then, and all had to go back in there after just a couple of hours, so the kids could watch their shows on the TV again.

Now fully retired, but still loving photography, it is what I do to stay busy and out of my wife's way most of every day. I mostly experiment with light now, doing still life and product type shoots, but I take portraits of family and close friends when I can get them to pose for me, and I don't charge for this any more, but a donation to help cover printing costs is never refused.

Having a studio of my own lets me leave a setup one day and come back to finish the shoot another day, picking up right where I left off. I don't need to break up and put away anything now. My studio is set up with a 6 backdrop motorized roller system, and a ceiling grid to allow me to attach lighting or anything else in the shooting area just below the 8' ceiling. I have 8 LED light panels up there for making videos, and can leave them in place while doing portrait, still life, and product shoots with lights, soft boxes on light stands, etc below. With the power on the ceiling and a minimum of light stands on my studio floor there are very few trip hazards in my studio. My tether cable drops from the ceiling grid in about the center of where I use my camera, with enough slack to let me move most anywhere in that half of the studio. The USB end drops down the back wall of my studio to the computer table where my laptop usually resides. I have a 60" Flat Screen TV on the wall above my computer that is set up to display every photo taken as it is entered into my computer. This TV faces the subject/model, so they can see themselves in each shot taken. They improve poses rapidly when they can see each shot taken.

There are power strips with electric outlets on the ceiling, so power for the lights is available within 5' of anywhere I wish to place a light, on the ceiling grid or below on a light stand. I have wireless control of all of the photo and video lights, so I can turn them on or off via wireless remotes at each of my camera stands/tripods, so don't need to climb a ladder for this. All of this remote power control capability came from Amazon at very reasonable prices. I still use the center ceiling light, but it's my work light now, and I have wireless switches for turning it on and off at the original doorway location, as well as each camera stand, my computer table, and a wheeled toolbox that I keep just left of me when doing a shoot. The bottom of this toolbox holds my gaffer tools and the top is where I place my camera when using it hand held and wish to take a break.

Charley...Show more →

Wow, what a story! Really cool that you have your own studio! I wish I had the room or the land to build one!

Mar 26, 2026 at 06:17 PM

Xysterz
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p.1 #6 · Changes

The AF seems to be a huge improvement. I'm totally used to center (or near center) focus, and then re-frame/re-compose. Really different world. And now I see mirrorless with "pre-shot" where the camera can capture a second before you shoot.

Mar 26, 2026 at 06:19 PM

CharleyL
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p.1 #7 · Changes

Xysterz wrote:
Wow, what a story! Really cool that you have your own studio! I wish I had the room or the land to build one!

I've wanted some kind of studio, a place where I could leave everything set up until the specific shoot was completed, for most of my adult life, but made do with all kinds of "temporary use" places. Some of these were larger than my present 19 X 26' studio, and some considerably smaller, and shared with other things. I even used a storage shed a couple of times, with much of the contents out and spread around on the lawn. One of the best was the stage of the theater that I had been the stage manager of for one Summer. With all of the curtains drawn, it made a 30 X 70' open floor studio with lights and a nice hardwood floor.

I had about given up with the idea of having my very own studio 6 years ago when I realized that the bedroom suite upstairs was empty, except for a bunch of stuff being stored, as both youngest sons who had shared the space were now out of the house and creating their own lives. The 8' ceiling has been limiting a few times, and storage space for props, etc. is also a bit limiting, but it is satisfying the need. It is set up for still life and product shooting as well as portraits, and video infomercials, which I was making for a daughter-in-law's health food interests.

The studio idea solved two problems, the first to build my first studio, the second to make certain that they couldn't come back (but the youngest developed MD, so is now back with us, but has his oldest brother's (We had 3 boys, one girl) former bedroom downstairs as he is in an electric wheelchair, so confined to the first floor. It's a bit sad, because he is the only one of the 4 interested in photography. But my oldest son's daughter became interested and spent time here learning the basics. She owns her own florist business, but spent time with me learning how to use my cameras, and then I gave her one of my older cameras, a Canon T7, lenses, backpack camera bag, lens cleaner, 2 Godox speedlites, S2 brackets, umbrellas, 2 soft boxes, two Godox MS300 studio strobes, light stands, and a bunch of other gear that I wasn't using. She has a website for her florist business and posts photos of the flower arrangements that she makes to give others ideas of what she can put together for them.

Here is her website -

https://www.floristinalbemarlenc.com/

Albemarle is a small town near central North Carolina. She is an art teacher at a local school for 4 days a week, so does this the rest of the week.

Charley

Mar 27, 2026 at 05:53 AM

Xysterz
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p.1 #8 · Changes

Sorry to hear about you son, but really glad you have your studio. If I ever have make one, it will definitely have to be a multi-purpose room!

Those are some nice floral arrangements. Reminds me of one of the local florists here that I frequently use.

Mar 27, 2026 at 09:17 AM


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