- Announcing the winners of the Wildlife Photographer of The Year 2025 competition
- The overall winner was captured using an 11-year-old Nikon D810 DSLR.
- Canon EOS R5 is the most popular camera among competition participants
The winners of the Wildlife Photographer of The Year 2025 competition have been revealed, and once again it’s an incredible set of images. The grand prize winner was photographed by South African photographer Wim van den Heever.
Its image depicts a supernatural scene of a rare brown hyena exploring the dilapidated remains of the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop in Namibia, a setting that creates an almost dystopian atmosphere. Van den Heever says he worked for nearly ten years to capture his brown hyena composition in the perfect location, and his patience paid off, creating a haunting ambiance that reflects wildlife’s ability to recolonize areas once dominated by human activity.
The Wildlife Photographer of The Year competition is one of the most prestigious photo competitions in the world. This year was a record-breaker, attracting more than 60,000 applications from around the world. The competition is aimed at nature photographers of all specialties and interests, with several events such as portraits of animals, birds, invertebrates, urban wildlife, underwater, plants and mushrooms, wildlife photojournalism, and more.
Eagle-eyed photographers will notice an even more astonishing detail: that the winning photo, beating thousands of other entries, was taken with a DSLR camera from the last decade. Van den Heever shot his masterpiece with a Nikon D810, which was released in the summer of 2014 and is pretty much ancient in digital terms. In an era where mirrorless cameras are rapidly developing, Van den Heever’s success is a testament to the longevity of enthusiast DSLRs. This proves that just because a camera doesn’t have many of the features of newer models, AI autofocus modes, subject recognition and tracking, and global electronic shutter modes, to name a few, doesn’t make it redundant.
DSLRs are far from dead
The big winner isn’t the only one captured by an older model DSLR. In fact, they feature highly in many of this year’s categories.
The winner of the competition’s youth category, Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, also had the best image captured with an aging Nikon DSLR camera. Italian Andrea Dominizi used his Nikon D7100 to take a close-up photograph of a long-horned beetle in the Lepini Mountains region. He paired it with a Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens for a very wide perspective and an off-camera flash to provide additional fill light.
Meanwhile, American Dennis Stogsdill used an old professional favorite to capture his winning image in the Mammals category. The Canon EOS 1DX Mark II was his tool of choice, a high-level body capable of achieving burst rates of 14 frames per second, or up to 16 fps in Live View mode. This gives many recent mirrorless bodies a run for their money.
Elsewhere, Ralph Pace won in the Underwater category using a Nikon D850 in a Nauticam body. This DSLR is often considered one of the best models of its type, combining high resolution and excellent low-light performance – ideal for underwater shots.
As DSLRs show they still have plenty of life left in them, Canon still has good reason to celebrate its mirrorless RF mount system. Of all the performance images entered in the competition, the Canon EOS R5 appears most often, making it the most popular camera. This isn’t really a surprise since the original R5 scored very well in our first review, while its successor currently ranks as Canon’s best camera.
This offers a fascinating insight into the type of equipment nature photographers will choose to work with in 2025 and demonstrates that experienced photographers stick with tried-and-true equipment, whether it was released in the last five years or as early as the decade before.
What are you currently shooting with? Would you still use an eleven year old DSLR? Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comments below!
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