Hi, everybody. Welcome to Episode Six of the photography explained podcast. In this episode, what are the different types of cameras?

I’m your host, Rick, and each week I’ll try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes without the irrelevant details. My aim is to explain things in just enough detail to help us with our photography and no more.

What are the different types of cameras then? Well, in the last episode, I answered the question posed by Mrs M – do I really need a camera in 2020? The answer was it depends. And I explained my thoughts and reasonings behind that.

The different types of cameras are

• DSLR – Digital Single Lens Reflex
• SLR – Single Lens Reflex
• Mirrorless – Full Frame/ APS-C/ Micro Four Thirds
• Go Pro/ action cameras
• Compact
• Medium format
• Large Format
• 3D
• 360
• Phone
• Specialist

You can listen to the episode here

Or keep on reading. Or do both. Entirely up to you!

Do you need a camera?

You don’t need a camera if you’re happy with a phone. Absolutely fine. But if you decide that you do need a camera, what kind of camera do you buy?

If you go on the internet, you’ll find there are endless numbers of cameras out there. So what I want to do in this episode is quickly go through the different types of cameras and explain what they are, what I use, and what you might want to think about when you’re choosing your next camera.

Okay, so what are the different types of cameras?

1 DLSR

First, is the DSLR, which I have helpfully annotated on my notes as DLSR. I am quite concerned – I can’t even spell a basic term like that right?

DSLR is a digital single-lens reflex camera.

Now what’s a single lens reflex camera I hear you all shouting at your, well whatever device you’re listening to this on. Very good question. And to answer that I need to go back in time to the days when we used to use this thing called film in cameras.

Yes, camera film.

SLRs were the cameras that tended to be used by professional photographers, there wasn’t a huge number of other choices, to be honest with you.

I will go into a lot more detail another time because it is quite important, really. But for the purposes of this episode, I will not go into too much irrelevant detail.

An SLR is a camera where through mirrors, prisms, strings, and magic and elastic trickery, you look through the viewfinder, and what you are actually looking at is actually through the middle of the lens. Marvellous science.

So SLR is a single lens reflex camera.

Film to Digital

Now take the film out of the back, put a sensor in and (in very crude terms) you have a DSLR. Yep, a bit of an oversimplification. But that’s the fundamental difference between the two.

So a DSLR (not the DLSR – I’ll never live that one down – I should edit out really but I do not know how to edit audio and I’m not going to learn today).

So DSLR was the camera that pros tended to use. And that takes us on to the next type of camera I want to talk about which is a mirrorless camera.

What is a mirrorless camera??

If you are sitting there scratching your head going, why is a camera called mirrorless, this is why. A DSLR/ SLR has a mirror in it, and a mirrorless camera doesn’t. That’s the difference.

If we’re starting again from scratch now, SLR would be called I don’t know what, but a mirrorless camera would be called, erm a camera.

So a mirrorless camera doesn’t have a mirror. You don’t look through the lens, you look through the viewfinder. And what you’re looking at is an electronic viewfinder. Obviously, we have to abbreviate that down to a EVF because we can’t summon up the energy to use all the words.

Electronic viewfinders

So an EVF (transcript came up with EDF) is an electronic viewfinder. Electronic viewfinders these days are brilliant. They weren’t great to start with. But the technology got to the point now where you virtually cannot tell the difference between the optical viewfinder of a DSLR and the EVF of a mirrorless camera.

Other cameras and compact cameras

These are often and wrongly called point-and-shoot cameras. They’re generally the cheaper cameras with smaller sensors. You can still take great photos with them. But yeah, compact cameras – I don’t know a great deal about and to be honest with you – look on the internet for compact cameras and you’ll see why I don’t know a lot about them.

There are a lot of them.

So what else do we have?

Medium format cameras.

Now one of the big differentiating factors between different camera systems is the size of the sensor. I’ll come on to this in a minute. A medium format camera has a bigger sensor than a DSLR. A DSLR has a bigger sensor than a cropped sensor camera which has a bigger sensor than a micro four thirds camera.

Medium format cameras are more high-end professional cameras.

Large format camera

You can still get large format cameras with a very large film or sensor. The bigger the sensor the more specialist and expensive the camera is.

Other cameras

There are also specialist cameras. You can get these incredibly clever 3D cameras that do 3D images, and even 360-degree images. And you can also get cameras that do 360 walkthroughs. I’ve recently looked at a camera called a Matterport. They cost about three grand and are quite complicated to use, but they give you a 3D walkthrough of a building, which is pretty much amazing.

So what else do we have apart from these fancy things?

Oh, yeah, the phone. Now for you youngsters who might not know this, back in the day of mobile phones, when they first came out, you used a mobile phone to do one of two things. You either phoned people and spoke to them or sent them a text message.

To text you had nine keys on your phone (for the numbers 1-9) to select letters to text.

These days, the cameras on phones are fantastic. I have an iPhone XS, and it takes fantastic photos. But it’s not replaced my DSLR or mirrorless camera. Okay, so these terms all seem a little bit strange. Let’s not worry about those, let’s concentrate on the main points about the different types of cameras.

My summary

In general terms, the bigger the sensor on the camera, the bigger and better the camera is, and the more expensive it is, and the higher end it is, in very general terms

The smaller the sensor, the smaller the camera is, and the cheaper the camera is.

Disclaimer time

And I’ll caveat this massively, the smaller the camera sensor is the less professional the camera is – not. I’ll come on to different sensor types in a separate episode of the podcast.

Remember this (as Take That once said)

One thing I need to remember though, and one thing I want to say is this – buying the best camera in the world doesn’t guarantee you’ll take the best photos in the world. You can buy a great camera and take rubbish photos.

You can also, well not with a rubbish camera, but with an average camera, if you know what you’re doing, take great photos. So a great camera doesn’t equal great photos.

A cheap camera doesn’t equal rubbish photos.

Nearly there

I’m sure there are a few other types of cameras but this is the main ones I wanted to talk about. 

What cameras do I use?

I’ve got a full-frame DSLR that is a Canon 6D. This is the workhorse camera that I use for my architectural photography, construction photography and real estate photography work. It’s quite a basic, no-frills camera. What it does do though is it takes great photos day in and day out, and I love the sensor and the resolution on it.

I also have a mirrorless camera which is actually a Micro Four Thirds camera. I’ll come on to that another time. It’s an Olympus, EM5 Mk2. I use that for my travel photography because it’s a lot smaller, more compact and takes great photos.

One thing I will say here is that I used an Olympus EM1 which I was kindly loaned by Olympus on a commercial shoot and nobody noticed the difference (to photos taken with my Canon 6D) so you can use a Micro Four Thirds camera commercially. I have proved this by doing it and being paid for the job.

Okay, that’s this episode done. This was just a very quick explanation of the different types of cameras. So what’s next on the photography explained called podcast?

Which camera should I buy?

Having told you about the different types of cameras, I’m going to give you some thoughts about how you might choose your next camera, regardless of what type it is.

Thank you

Thank you for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please leave a nice review and rating wherever you get your podcast from. And please subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you could tell everyone you know about my podcast, that would be even better.

You can check out my website, Rick McEvoy Photography where you can find out all about me and my architectural and construction photography. And also my blog.

Finally, let me know if there is a photography thing you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Head over to my Photography Explained Podcast) website, and click on the tile. If I explain your thing, I’ll give you a shout-out on that episode. And the list is now live on the website for all to see. This episode was brought to you by the power of Yorkshire tea. Yep, not a paid promotion. But that’s the truth. I had a cup before I came on and it kept me going.

What’s next? In the next Photography Explained Podcast – episode 7 – What Camera Should I Buy?

Thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

Cheers from me, Rick

OK – that was the podcast episode.

Want to know more?

Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.

And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.

Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.

Let me send you stuff

I send out a weekly email to my subscribers. It is my take on one photography thing, plus what I have been writing and talking about. Just fill in the box and you can get my weekly photographic musings straight to your inbox. Which is nice.

And finally a little bit about me

Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.

Thank you

Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).

Cheers from me Rick