What makes a digital camera a dslr?
I ask this because I got a canon g10 for Christmas, I did not think this was a dslr, (I've been reading and looking for tutorials and it lists this camera as a prosumer dslr camera) but it can use lenses. So what exactly makes a camera a dslr? Is it the ability to use lenses, have manual focus, or what?
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You are right about the G10 not being a DSLR. It means a digital single lens reflex and that you are looking through the lens to compose. Your G10 has a rangefinder window where you look through a separate viewfinder but see what the lens sees or you have liveview through the LCD screen.
Forget the technical stuff. If the ENTIRE lens detaches from the camera body its an SLR (DSLR if its digital). Your G10 isnt a DSLR. It doesnt have interchangeable lenses. Accessory conversion lenses are available which screw onto the lens which is permanently attached to your camera.
Your camera DOES have a separate viewfinder lens. The image you see isnt taken directly through the lens. And not all separate viewfinders are bad. Ive seen photos taken with 35mm SLRs and they get cropped too because no viewfinder produces a 100% accurate representation of what youre photographing. Thats why viewfinder specs will say something like 92% coverage or 96% coverage. The trouble is which 96% of the scene are you actually viewing? You wont know til you review the photo.
DSLR stand s for Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. So basically a DSLR is a camera with a digital image sensor that only uses one lens (no separate viewfinder lens). It doesn't necessarily mean the camera can use interchangeable lenses though. The Canon G-series is called a DSLR because it has a viewfinder that uses the same lens as the image sensor, but they do not have interchangeable lenses.
When you look through the viewfinder, with a SLR/DSLR you are seeing the actual view of the photo you would take.
With a standard camera, the viewfinder is separate from the lens and this is why non-SLR/DSLR cameras often 'chop the heads off' of people in the photos as the image renders slightly differently because you see it from a different angle.
dslr stands for digital single lense reflex
it works differently
it uses mirrors to produce images