Go back a few years, and the choice between mirrorless cameras and DSLRs was relatively straightforward. Essentially, if you were either a professional photographer - or had aspirations to be one - and wanted the best of the best when it came to image quality, you plumped for a DSLR. For consumers a bit more concerned with weight and portability, then a mirrorless camera was probably what you'd go for.

Nowadays, you’ve got a harder choice to make. There are very affordable, entry-level DSLRs out there and there are monumentally expensive mirrorless cameras at the high end. How are you supposed to choose?

To rewind a bit, the difference between the two types of camera is in the name. DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex, and means that once light has passed through the lens, it hits a mirror angled at 45 degrees. The light shoots straight up and into a viewfinder that, when you hold your eye to it, shows you precisely what the lens is seeing at that moment.

It’s a true optical path, with no digital processing in between. When you take a photograph, the angled mirror swings out of the way, revealing an image sensor behind it – it’s why DSLRs make that oh-so-satisfying 'ker-chunk' noise.

A mirrorless camera, unsurprisingly, doesn’t have a mirror. Instead, light goes through the lens, straight onto the sensor, where it is processed and, almost simultaneously, displayed either on the monitor on the back of the camera or on a very small monitor – an Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) on the top. When you push the shutter button, the camera records what’s on the sensor at that moment.

DSLRs use traditional technology which legacy companies like Nikon, Canon and Pentax have decades of experience with. On the whole, DSLRs tend to be robust, capable of great image quality and give you an extremely impressive battery life that the average mirrorless camera just can't match.

Removing the traditional mirror on mirrorless cameras, though, leads to several advantages. Mirrorless cameras don’t need a complicated optical viewfinder or a big mirror to reflect light, which means they can be a lot smaller and lighter. Some jobs, such as autofocus, can be done on the sensor itself, leading to very fast read times that mean some mirrorless cameras are capable of super-quick performance.

These days, there's also a high number of mirrorless cameras with full-frame sensors, too, so at the high end there is no discernible difference between the output of a mirrorless camera and that of a traditional DSLR.

There are other advantages and disadvantages besides, though – read on to find out which you should choose.