Nikon Beats Canon 9-5 in January Photo Mag Contests

Nikon beat Canon 9-5 in January’s reader photo contests in the two largest U.S. photography magazines, but temporary changes in the contest formats made it the second month in a row in which it was difficult to make the normal comparisons.

Six of the winning photos in Shutterbug’s “Picture This!” feature were made with Nikon and only one with Canon as Shutterbug returned to its normal contest format. In December, Shutterbug temporarily abandoned the usual contest and had readers send in old family album photos, most shot with Kodak Brownies.

January is the month that Popular Photography and Imaging runs its “Annual Readers Picture Contest” rather than its “Your Best Shot” monthly contest. The annual contest is usually a wealth of statistics for Nikon-Canon comparison with close to 20 shots each to be counted. But the magazine this year gave camera credit only on the grand prize winner and the first prize winners in each of nine categories, and gave no camera credits on the half-dozen or so runners-up in each category. The bottom line was four shots credited to Canon and three to Nikon, with two photos made by other brands. Some shots specified that the photo was made by a Nikon or Canon, while others only indicated the brand of camera used by the photographer.

The combined 9-5 score in favor of Nikon was Nikon's third winning month in a row and gets Nikon off to a good start for the year. Canon beat Nikon 89-83 for all of 2006. Together, Nikon/Canon photos outnumbered all other brands combined seven-to-one in January, though the ratio usually averages out to four-to-one over the year.

Popular Photography and Imaging and Shutterbug run photo contests for readers each month. The majority of winning photos are shot with either Nikon or Canon cameras, and http://www.nikonvscanon.com/ tracks the winners as a means of keeping score in the perennial argument among photographers of which brand is better.

The analysis by http://www.nikonvscanon.com/ is not intended to take sides or to indicate that either magazine favors either camera brand. In fact, the winning brand fluctuates frequently from month to month in both magazines.

Copyright 2007