The digital revolution in the photography industry has steadily developed toward a definite goal of minimizing mechanical connections and components to allow it works with higher efficiency with optimized results.
Best example found in smartphones that are as simple as the capturing lens and a screen for all the required user-interface and controls with the smart application for optional image adjustment and instant sharing on the cloud or social media. It is no wonder why pictures from smartphones outnumbered the images from everything else by a large margin while the meaningful difference in image quality steadily narrowed.
The revolution of the electronic-based digital mirrorless cameras also rapidly outpaced the rest and taking a dominating position as we saw it happened over the last couple of years.
The digital connection between the lens mount and all lense with compatible electronic data bus also allow the system to expand not only vertically but also horizontally which enables us to use 3rd party lens while retaining most of the original function incorporation with the features from the system camera.
For example here, the leader in digital camera front - SONY, IMHO, has the most sophisticated autofocus system and sensor-based image stabilization works with Canon lens (EOS) with minimizing compromise. It also works with a pure mechanical legacy lens with motorized smart-adapter as the example here - Leica Summilux-M 24/1.4 ASPH works in autofocus and image stabilized on SONY A9.
The smart adapter also allows technical lens such as Canon TS-E lenses works with good flexibility on larger format cameras, for example here the beautiful Canon TS-E 17/4L on Fujifilm GFX50R becomes a 13.6/4 lens - still a perfect tilt/shift lens - however with a more limited 5-6mm shift range, yet very useful.
What's next? The AI-powered chip will further elevate the performance of digital mirrorless camera to the next level on speed, accuracy, and intelligence. Technology may never surpass a great photographer, but it is safe to assume the next smart-camera is likely to beat most of the incompetent users.
Camera - Smartphone - Computer = Visual Material - Communication - Processing and Staorge = ONE