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Recently – in 2009 to be precise – we saw the first camera that could be described as an SLR without a mirror. Instead it has an electronic viewfinder which takes its data directly from the imaging sensor. Electronic viewfinders used to be dreadful, but – just like camera-back screens – they’ve improved enormously. They aren’t yet as sharp or as immediate as an SLR finder but they are still getting better.

As yet the photographic world can’t quite agree what to call these cameras. We rather like Electronic Viewfinder – Interchangeable Lens, which creates the acronym EVIL. However, it hasn’t yet stuck. You’ll also see them called ‘compact system cameras’ or ‘interchangeable lens cameras’. As SLRs are also interchangeable lens cameras, this is not a helpful term.

Whenever we use the term ‘system camera’ in this book, we are including both conventional SLRs and the variants covered in this section.

The Olympus PEN E-PL1, one of the new generation of compact system cameras (Photo courtesy of Olympus)