>>4017669>What was the point of TLRs? Why not make them as SLRs in the first place?There's a reason TLRs came first and why SLRs were a revelation and technological leap when they first came up.
Also, it's not just the moving mirror (that has to be synchronised with the shutter, which is in the lens) that made SLRs more complex to manufacture.
There's lots of cumulative improvements that contribute a huge lot to how practical SLRs are, and which we now take for granted, but which took time to be developed and introduced to SLRs.
For instance the instant return mirror. At first, after taking a shot with an SLR, the mirror would stay up, blanking your viewfinder, until you brought it down. Instant return mirror came later.
Then, full aperture metering. At first, you had to stop down to the shooting aperture to meter, cause the camera had to way to know the full aperture of the lens and calculate exposure from wide open. Heck, at the very early stages, the aperture wouldn't even automatically stop down to the taking aperture at the moment of exposure and open up right afterwards, you'd have to do it manually.
TLRs had none of those issues.
Even the pentaprism we take for granted now for SLRs, wasn't a thing in the very early ones, and the image was mirrored horizontally like in TLRs.
SLRs might seems like a no brainer now for practicality, but picture this:
You're in the 50's, and there's this new fangled type of camera that costs 50% more than the "normal" cameras you're used to, but every time you need to shoot you have to set the lens aperture (just for the shot, not before and after cause then vf would be too dark) and reset it afterwards. And when you take a shot, the viewfinder blanks out until you reset it, interrupting your shooting. Oh, and you can't really use wideangles, plus the camera is heavier and more expensive. But damn, you can see through the lens while shooting, see the effect of focal lengths and filters, that's cool right?
Would you buy it?
