- 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award Winners Announced
- The overall winner was captured using an 11-year-old Nikon D810 DSLR camera.
- The 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 overall winner was photographed by South African photographer Wim van den Heever, who takes home the Grand Prize.
His image depicts an otherworldly scene in which a rare brown hyena explores the ruined remains of the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop in Namibia, a setting that creates an almost dystopian atmosphere. Van den Heever explains that he worked for almost ten years to capture his composition of a brown hyena in the perfect location, and his patience paid off, creating a haunting environment that reflects the ability of wildlife to recolonize areas once dominated by human activity.
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is one of the most prestigious photography competitions in the world. This year broke records and attracted more than 60,000 entries from around the world. The contest is aimed at nature photographers of all specialties and interests and features multiple rounds, such as portraits of animals, birds, invertebrates, urban wildlife, underwater, plants and fungi, wildlife photojournalism and more.
Eagle-eyed photographers will notice an even more surprising detail; that the overall winning photo, beating out thousands of other entries, was taken with a DSLR camera from the last decade. Van den Heever photographed his masterpiece with a Nikon D810, which was released in the summer of 2014 and is practically ancient in digital terms. In an era of rapid development of mirrorless cameras, Van den Heever’s achievement is a testament to the longevity of enthusiast DSLRs. This goes to show that just because a camera may lack the many features of newer models – AI autofocus modes, subject recognition and tracking, and global electronic shutter modes, to name just a few – this does not make it redundant.
DSLRs are far from dead
The overall winner isn’t the only one that has been captured by an older DSLR model. In fact, they rank highly in many of this year’s categories.
The winner of the competition’s youth category, Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, also viewed the image above captured with an old Nikon DSLR camera. Andrea Dominizi from Italy used her Nikon D7100 to take a close-up of a longhorn beetle in the Lepini Mountains region. He paired it with a Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens for a super wide perspective and an external flash to provide some extra fill light.
Meanwhile, Dennis Stogsdill from the USA used an old professional favorite to capture his winning image in the Mammal category. The Canon EOS 1DX Mark II was his tool of choice, a high-end body capable of burst speeds 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.
On the other hand, Ralph Pace won the Underwater category using a Nikon D850 in a Nauticam housing. This DSLR is often considered one of the best models of its type, as it combines high resolution with excellent low-light performance, ideal for shooting in an underwater environment.
While DSLRs are proving that they still have plenty of life left in them, Canon still has good reason to celebrate its mirrorless RF mount system. Of all the high-performance images entered in the contest, it is the Canon EOS R5 that appears most frequently, making it the most popular camera. This isn’t a huge surprise as the original R5 scored highly when we first reviewed it, while its successor currently ranks as the best Canon camera.
This offers a fascinating insight into the type of equipment nature photographers will choose to work with in 2025, and shows that experienced photographers are sticking with tried and tested equipment, whether it was released in the last five years or the decade before that.
What are you currently shooting with? Would you still use an eleven-year-old DSLR? Don’t forget to leave your opinion in the comments below!
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