June 2019 - Mirrorless Viewfinders Don’t Cut It

Mirrorless Viewfinders Don’t Cut It…

June is a great month for photography in South Africa. Winter is ON! The sun is low in the north sky, the clouds have gone and the dust is being kicked up by the hungry herds.

Unfortunately, due to various things I’m not really able to take part in the photofest. Certainly not in Big Five reserves that are a little too distant for a weekend trip.

So this months photo is from a few years back, although, like many of my images it has never been published online before (so many get stolen I’ve lost count).

This guy had just eaten but was still looking thoroughly pissed off. Mostly, I believe, because he had a fracas with some unruly vultures about whose food it was.

He had rushed out of the shade several times to defend the carcass but now, he’d decided to move on and find somewhere less annoying to sleep it off. I just happened to be in the way.

There’s one good reason, in my book, not to go mirrorless in wildlife photography and, as far as I know I’m the only one to have mentioned it. The experience of technology, of mirrorless viewfinders, is not as rewarding when looking through a 400mm piece of highly engineered glass.

DSLR’s with mirrors are brighter, look more natural and are altogether better things to look though when you want a close up of a lion with issues.

For a photographer who also loves the wild experience, that is really important, because, as Sean O’Connell (a wildlife photographer) says in the Secret Life of Walter Mitty…