Recently I saw the top best photos of the Audubon bird photography competition: 2020 top 10, 2020 top 100, 2019 top 10, 2019 top 100. It’s a yearly photo competition for the North American wildlife photographers from USA and Canada.
“The National Audubon Society is a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world and uses science, education and grassroots advocacy to advance its conservation mission. It is named in honor of John James Audubon, a Franco-American ornithologist and naturalist who painted, cataloged, and described the birds of North America in his famous book Birds of America published in sections between 1827 and 1838.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Audubon_Society . The Audubon society have a website https://www.audubon.org/ and a seasonal paper magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audubon_(magazine)
While browsing the winners gallery and reading the description of the photos I start wondering which camera is the most used? An idea appeared in my mind: what if actually I will make some statistics to see what equipment and settings are the most used for the best wildlife photos? It will be interesting to see what is the “Crowd wisdom” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd . And indeed it was, as I had some surprised by seeing the results.
So I have added into a table all the data of the top 10 and top 100 of the both year 2020 and 2019. Unfortunately the 2018 years and before only had equipment description for winners not also for the top 100. So I ended using: (top 10 + top 100) * 2 years = 220 total photos to generate the statistics. Some of the names of the equipment had to be manually modified (this took me the longest time) for having identical names to generate the proper data necessary to generate statistics (pivot) tables. For example the Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 lens had around 5-6 different names in the description of photos on the Audubon website. I will share the input data here: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AoxwgnI1mcZs8zqffzZtQAxBXLAX?e=doFsVJ for anyone that want to do more statistics or to complete this in the following years.
So here are the winners STATISTICS:
Camera Maker: table and graph
No surprise here, to be sincere I would expected Canon and Nikon to dominate and Canon to win. But it dominates more strongly than I thought, Sony and other makers have very few photo winners, less then 10% together.
Camera Model: table
Camera Model: graph
I observed before making the stats that the Nikon D500 appeared many times, but I was not sure was more or less then Canon 7D II. Personally I consider the Nikon D500 to be the best camera value ever made for wildlife photography up to this date. But it has it’s own problems, it’s not the perfect camera, at least not for me. For example I miss on Nikon D500 the ability to overwrite multiple settings of the camera by pressing a customizable push button like competition have (ex. Sony – 6o functions and Canon – 13 functions). Also the “silent shutter” of D500 seems to be more like the older generation of Canon cameras (it use temporizing the mirror flap-back instead of newer Canon technology that use a slower mirror flap, this slower mirror flap is used in D850 but not in D500). There was still room for improvement of APS-C semi-pro, unfortunately seems both Canon and Nikon abandoned this very prolific camera line in the favor of developing new mirrorless cameras, even up to this day this camera line do not have yet replacements.
In the pro-camera sector Canon 1Dx mark II seems to lead by far. The reason why Nikon D5 / D4s appear rarely probably has to do with the fact that D850 / D500 are more closer with the AF performance to the pro-class D5, while for Canon line there is a big gap in AF performance from the 7D II / 5D IV to the pro-class 1Dx mark II.
Crop factor: table and graph
On crop factor (sensor sizes) it seems Full-Frame (104) and APS-C (109) are almost equal, while the rest like micro-four-thirds are almost absent.
Lens Model: table
Lens Model: graph
Here was real surprise of this set of statistics. You expect the best photos to be obtained with very expensive and very big lenses … well: WRONG! It seems portability and accessibility (price) have a big importance to. The Canon 100-400mm f/5.6 IS II seems to be the king of the lenses and closely followed by the very price accessible but more heavy Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 VR.
On the professional part seems Canon have a big advantage over the Nikon, as Canon 600mm and 500mm F4 superteles are almost twice more used then the Nikon counterparts. This is probably because the superteles of Nikon (FL generation) are more expensive and more rare on the second hand market.
There is a surprise to see there the 1991 old lens Canon 400mm F/5.6 still so much used. Also to see the first iteration of the supertele third-party zooms 150-600mm F/6.3 produced initially by Tamron then by Sigma can produce good images to be on the position #6.
Teleconvertor: table and graph
In the teleconverter usage, both Canon and Nikon 500/600mm F4 supertele lenses have similar results, about 50% of the time. However when we talk about teleconverters mounted on F5.6 lenses the situation becomes completely different. While 1.4x is used on Canon F5.6 lenses quite often, there was not a single image with the nikon F5.6 aperture mid level lenses used with the TC, even if Nikon have 4 lenses of this type in the winners list: the 200-500mm, 80-400mm, 70-300mm and the fixed 500mm PF.
Maximum focal length (mm): table and graph
Equivalent maximum focal length (Eq. mm): table and graph
As focal length information missed from photo description and not all photos had EXIF, I had to make the closest info of this: the maximum focal length of the equipment. But I also calculated the equivalent focal length (focal length * crop factor) to see what kind of magnification had the photographer in the viewfinder. Seems the most used are around 600-750mm equivalent and not the longer superteles + teleconverters.
Aperture (F/): table and graph
The results show that F5.6 is by far the most used aperture, followed by the F6.3. More then 50% of the photos are using F5.6 and F6.3 . What this means? It means almost all photographers are using their equipment wide open or closed very little (a third of a stop). It let you use a lower ISO and also give a more blurred background then using F8.
Exposure time: table and graph
The most used exposure times are 1/1000 up to 1/2000, put this in comparative with equivalent maximum focal length and you realize the majority of photographers are using a 1.5 to 2* equivalent focal length. This is a surprise for me and in the same time not a surprise. As the current modern equipment is capable of offering 3-4 or more stops of stabilization you would expect photographers to use 0.7 – 0.3 * equivalent focal length to have a lower ISO (low noise). However keeping the settings in this way you have a big chance to obtain a motion blured picture when some action suddenly happen and the subject moves. So for safety, the majority of wildlife photographers are using an 1.5-2 * equivalent focal length to freeze the subject or to obtain a sharp action photo.
Sensitivity (ISO): table and graph
Taking the previous data into consideration (the Exposure Time), this graph is no surprise. The Sensitivity graph is dominated mostly by ISO of 800 and 1000 as the Exposure Time is mostly very short to be able to use shorter exposure time necessary to shot action photos.
ENDING CONCLUSIONS – EQUIPMENT:
As good as the pro-cameras and superteles are (I have used those myself from Canon 300mm F2.8 IS II up to the recent 400mm F2.8 IS III), it seems good photos can also be made with cheap equipment, but probably this require to be more often present in the nature. The portability of the lens seems to be important, as for example you can keep a light lens on your front seat when you travel by car in the nature. It’s more difficult to do the same with a supertele lens and a pro camera. Also you can move light equipment more fast to catch the action when this suddenly happens.
The majority of photos seems to be made with relatively new semi-pro lenses like Canon 100-400mm F/5.6 IS II or Nikon 200-500mm F/5.6 and mid-level cameras like Nikon D500/D850 and Canon 7D mark II/5D mark IV. In the sensor size (crop factor) seems to be equally split between APS-C and Full-Frame.
Nikon D500 + Nikon 200-500mm F5.6 – one of the big winners of the stats
The 1.4x teleconverter seems clearly more used on the Canon cameras then on the Nikon, there is a huge advantage of usability in the favor of Canon for coupling TC with 400mm focal F/5.6 lenses, while the Nikon 200-500mm VR is never used with a TC.
In the pro market Canon 1Dx mark II seems to be the most used, that in combination with the superteles Canon 600/500mm F4 IS II that have a fairly accessible price/value and they are a lot more common then Nikon (FL version) in the second hand market.
A big surprise was to see older semi-pro equipment like Canon 5D mark III, 1D mark IV, 7D; Nikon D4s, D4, D750, D300s rarely appearing or missing from the stats. Those are still potent action cameras but it seems wildlife photographers are rarely using them anymore. From the older equipment the only ones still commonly used seems to be: the oldie Canon 400mm F/5.6 released in 1991 , the birding classic Canon 500mm F4 IS first generation released in 1999 and the Canon 1Dx (mark I) released in 2012.
Sony, Olympus and Fujifilm have almost no market penetration for wildlife photography even they released good equipment in the recent years, but it seems the tradition of the 2004-2012 years of the Canon and Nikon dominating the wildlife market is still keeping up to this day. Also there are very few mirrorless winners compared with the traditional dSLR cameras. Exotic lenses like Canon 400mm F2.8 / 600mm F4 IS III or mirroless superteless Sony 400mm F2.8 / 600mm F4 have no market penetration. Opposing to that the surprise was Nikon 600mm F4 FL VR lens that is very expensive and more rare in second hand market (then Canon counterpart) but appeared quite often in the winners list.
ENDING CONCLUSIONS – SETTINGS:
For the settings statistics showed that the majority of wildlife photographers are shooting mostly wide open aperture, with an exposure time of 1.5 * equivalent focal length and with a ISO setting of 800-1000 (I will call it high for APS-C cameras and medium for FF cameras).