Over the last couple of weeks on dPS we’ve been running a reader camera census to do a little investigating into what cameras our readers are using as their primary digital camera.

Over 1800 readers responded to the question and today and tomorrow I’d like to share the results that we found.

Today I’d like to start with some of the more general results and tomorrow I’ll reveal the top camera models and reveal which single model DSLR is used by over 11% of all of our DSLR owning readers.

In this post I’ll reveal:

  • Which type of camera is used most by our readers
  • Which manufacturers are most popular in different classes of cameras

Do keep in mind that the following stats are just a summary of what our readers are using and as such is skewed towards people who are perhaps a little more serious in their hobby than the average camera owner.

Format of Cameras

I don’t think that there will be too many surprises in this result but when it comes down to the format of camera that most of our readers are using – the Digital SLR wins hands down with 94% of our readers responding that their primary camera is a DSLR.

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Worth noting is that we were only counting the ‘primary’ camera used and did not count those readers who said that they used a point and shoot as a backup/secondary camera. I suspect that quite a few readers do this (I know I do). Perhaps we’ll run a survey on this in the coming months.

Obviously with the DSLR becoming a more affordable option the popularity of the format grows. It will be interesting to see whether the Micro Four Thirds market expands in the coming year and whether it’ll take ground away from DLSRs and/or Point and Shoot cameras.

Also note that we’ve lumped a lot of cameras in the ‘point and shoot’ category. If it’d been larger segment I would have done more analysis on whether they were compacts vs super zoom cameras – but the numbers were relatively small. My impression in compiling the stats was that about half those in that 6% segment were compacts and the other half were larger cameras.

Manufacturers of DSLRs

We always have a lot of debate in our forum area on the merit of different camera manufacturers. A lot of the debate revolves around the Canon vs Nikon rivalry – with a few readers who are fans of other manufacturers chiming in. This is reflected by the split of manufacturers in the DSLR section.

DSLR-manufacturers.png

Just over 86.1 of our DSLR owning readers own a Canon or Nikon with Pentax, Sony and Olympus splitting almost all of the rest (only 0.4% of the total came from Samsung, Sigma, Konica Minolta and Fujifilm).

Canon fans will rejoice in this ‘win’ – however it is worth noting that those mentioning Canon cameras put forward 19 models while there were only 15 Nikon models mentioned. Canon fans might want to hold off on their gloating a little until we reveal the #1 camera owned by our readers in tomorrows post.

Manufacturers of Point and Shoots

As mentioned above – the number of responses from those using point and shoot cameras as their primary cameras was pretty low so I’m not going to put too much weight on these results. We’ll run another survey in the coming months to dig deeper into this market – but for the time being, here’s how the split went along manufacturer lines in the point and shoot category.

point and shoot-manufactuers.png

Canon dominates with Panasonic having a fairly respectable representation also. The other section was made up of a small number of responses for Leica, Olympus, Pentax and even a few who say that their iPhone is their primary camera.

Micro Four Thirds Manufacturers

The sample size for this response was even smaller and as there’s such a limited number of manufacturers in the game at this stage there’s not much to say.

micro four thirds manufacturers.png

This will be one to watch develop over the coming year or two.

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