DSLR vs Mirrorless - Battle of the Century?

DSLR vs Mirrorless - Battle of the Century?

We love battles in photography. Film vs digital? Glass lantern slide vs 35mm transparency? Crop sensor vs full frame? Bring it on! But today I'm not aiming at a contentious discussion as, to be fair, both DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have their own particular advantages and I use both. I use both for different applications, although the DSLR does also have a Live View option, whereas the mirrorless doesn't have a Pentaprism option.

However, it did strike me that whatever the advantages of one over the other then size and weight might not necessarily be one of the factors involved. This comparison is of course slightly contentious in itself, but let's take a full frame DSLR (Pentax K-1) and a full frame mirrorless (Sony A7R III) and put a 70-300mm zoom on each. The DSLR lens is actually a 75-300mm, but that's a minor difference. Now here they are, side by side, set at 70 or 75mm:


They both need the same size of bag to carry them. The mirrorless lens is actually bigger even though the camera body is ssmaller, but overall they are just about the same. Set to 300mm, we get a similar result:


That would seem to suggest that it's the lens that's the limiting factor as much as the camera body itself. But what about the weight? The mirrorless combination shown weighs in at 1250g and the DSLR version at 1410g, just 160g heavier. Is that a deal breaker?
Of course, whilst all the above is true, the new 70-300mm lens also contains a drive motor, whereas the DSR lens does not, being driven by screw AF from the camera body. So a slight variation there. Where there is a huge variation is overall cost. The mirrorless combination shown would set us back £3148 and the DSLR version's actual cost was £1924, albeit with a special offer lens at £125.

I suppose what it does go to show is that comparisons are never as simple as they seem and in the end individual photographers will find particular features are the ones that count for them.