Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 just released a sneak peek at its incredible shortlisted winning entries — and it proves that DSLR cameras still rule this photography genre

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition has released a preview of select winning images for its 62nd year Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London The full set of 100 winning images will be exhibited at the Museum following the full winners’ announcement on October 16 The winners announcement of the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is one of my favorite dates in the photographic calendar.

It seems like every year the winning and commended photographers outdo themselves in capturing vivid, fascinating stories from the natural world.

One thing I also love doing is poring over which cameras the winning photographers are using to capture their spectacular shots.

As such, when the Museum released this set of preview images to whet our appetites ahead of the full announcement, I headed straight to the caption information — and discovered to my great interest that the two most-used cameras on the list so far are both Nikon DSLRs! The full list of cameras used to capture the sixteen shots on the full list is a real mixed bag.

As well as a selection of pro and prosumer mirrorless and DSLR cameras, there’s also a DJI Mavic drone and a Leica Q3 43 compact.

However, the two cameras that featured most prominently — with two images apiece, representing a quarter of the full list — were the ten-year-old Nikon D500 and the Nikon D850 ! (Image credit: © Dewald Tromp / Wildlife Photographer of the Year) The highly commended image ‘Eye of the Storm’ by Dewald Tromp from South Africa, depicting a chameleon battling its way through a sandstorm in Nigeria (above), was captured using the Nikon D850, as was American Ralph Pace’s image of a sea hare gliding through eelgrass in Monterey Bay (below). (Image credit: © Ralph Pace / Wildlife Photographer of the Year) Jack Crawford in the UK has been highly commended in the 15-17 Years bracket for his perfectly timed moment of a swift flying underneath the looming bulk of a 747 — shot on a Nikon D500 (below). (Image credit: © Jack Crockford / Wildlife Photographer of the Year) And Canadian Shane Gross strapped his Nikon D500 into an Aquatica AD500 underwater housing to capture his highly commended, half-in half-out image of a school of bigeye trevally off the coast of the Seychelles (below). (Image credit: © Shane Gross / Wildlife Photographer of the Year) One thing’s for sure — the DSLR isn’t dead just yet! If you want to be able to see these images for yourself when the exhibition begins in October, you can grab tickets here .

The D850 and D500 The Nikon D850 is a hugely popular full-frame DSLR. (Image credit: Future) The Nikon D850 , released in 2017, is a wildlife photography legend.