With 2021 shaping up to be a banner year for avian photography, as the world finds ways to adapt to safe outdoor activities in the reality of the COVID era, here’s an opportunity to review some of the best mirrorless system options for birders and bird photographers. The days of guessing, presuming, and wondering if you’ve exposed properly are history. To borrow the trendy technical term “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get), the viewfinder image is precisely the exposure captured by your camera. A major draw is mirrorless’ real-exposure indicator through an electronic viewfinder.

And no wonder, as each mirrorless format brings to the table a lighter, more intuitive shooting platform, perfectly suited to capturing the vast varieties of birds, whether at rest or in flight. Of particular note is the full-on drive to market mirrorless cameras to the birding community. In recent years, mirrorless has been enthusiastically embraced by legacy manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon, and Sony, which introduced mirrorless in the full-frame autofocus format.

Mirrorless technology was first introduced by Epson and Leica at the turn of the century, followed by Olympus and Panasonic, creators of the Micro Four Thirds (MFT) format. One notable bright spot is the market for mirrorless gear, which is lighter than DSLRs. Indeed, in recent history, most marketing metrics indicate a somewhat flagging general camera sales environment. The mirrorless camera revolution underway right now is attracting untold numbers of people into the birding and bird photography ranks.

The exponential growth in avian photography across all experience levels, which first accelerated with the transition from film to digital, is once again surging. They are but two new products among a spate of items currently marketed to birders. While innovations across the expanse of brands and cameras abound, two - the Olympus Micro Four Thirds 150-400mm lens and the Sony Alpha 1 full-frame mirrorless body - may well be the greatest of the bunch. When students of the evolution of photo technology look back on 2021, they will undoubtedly see it as a year of seismic generational innovation, one when truly epochal products hit the marketplace. View our roundup of the best mirrorless cameras for bird photography.

Nikon tc-14b 1.4x converter