World Press Photo just announced the winning photos for the 2019 edition of it’s world’s most prestigious photojournalism contest. Camera metadata shared alongside the top photos is again providing us with an inside look at what gear the world’s top photojournalists are using at the moment.



The Spanish photography site Photolari gathered all the data and published a breakdown of the brands, systems, cameras, and sensor formats used this year.

While Nikon surprisingly took the crown from Canon in 2018 with 52% representation among winning photos compared to Canon’s 30%, Nikon’s time at the top didn’t last long. This year, Canon struck back and was behind 46.4% of the winning photos compared to Nikon’s 36.8%.

While Sony has made huge strides in the camera market over the past year — it became #1 in full-frame cameras in the US last year — its use by the photojournalists in World Press Photo hasn’t changed. Only a single finalist photographer was confirmed to have used a Sony camera (the a7R II) for their work.

DSLRs still dominate the photojournalism landscape: 71.1% of top photos were shot with them while mirrorless only accounted for 4.4% of the photos for which data was available.

In terms of individual cameras, Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon 5D Mark III, Nikon D5, Canon 1DX Mark II, and Nikon D850 were the top five tools of choice.

And in the area of sensor size, full-frame is understandably still the format that’s most preferred.

You can see how the top camera gear used in World Press Photo photos has changed by checking out the breakdowns for 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.