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| Photo by chuttersnap |
Last week, the prestigious photojournalism contest World Press Photo announced its 2018 winning photos, and most of those winners included information about the gear used to capture their images. Taking advantage of this fact, Spanish photography website Photolari pulled that public data and created a series of graphs breaking down the equipment used by participating photojournalists.
Of the 129 winning images, 97 included gear details; though the graphs don’t represent the models were used by all participants, they do cover the majority. And the short version of the results goes something like this: Nikon dominated the brands, and the DSLR continues to dominate over mirrorless.
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According to the breakdown, the Nikon D5, Nikon D810, and Canon EOS 5D Mark III tied for first place, with 11 winning photos each. Coming in second is the Nikon D800E and Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with seven units each. Finally, both the Nikon D4S and Nikon D700 tied for third place with six units each.
Nikon is the overall winner among gear use, representing a total of 51.5% versus Canon’s second place 29.9%. Other makers represented far smaller pieces of the pie, with Fujifilm taking 6.2%, Sony taking 5.1%, and both Pentax and DJI taking 2.1% each. Not represented in the percentage graph are three Leica models, two of them the M10 and the other a Leica SL.
Further revealing the type of gear used is another category: types of cameras. That breakdown reveals DSLRs comprised the majority of participants’ gear at 83.5%, with mirrorless taking second place at 11.3%, and other unspecified types representing a total of 5.2%.
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This isn’t Photolari’s first breakdown of World Press Photo winner gear. Last year, the site found that Canon took the top three slots, with the 5D Mark III in first place, while the 5D Mark II and Mark IV models took second and third, respectively. Nikon wasn’t even represented until 7th place on last year’s breakdown. Photolari’s graphs also reveal an uptick in mirrorless popularity. In 2017, DSLRs claimed 88.8% of the “types” category, a figure that dropped to 83.5% in 2018. Mirrorless only claimed 5.55% in 2017, increasing to 11.3% this year.
That said, it’s important to note that Photolari’s 2017 graphs are based on only 36 out of 45 awarded photos. So while it’s nice to compare 2017 to 2018 and draw grand conclusions about the camera market, this is probably more an exercise in bragging rights than an accurate representation of camera company health.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)