Best cameras for wildlife photography 2024

The best cameras for wildlife photography won't turn you into an award-winning animal photographer overnight, but they are perhaps the most essential part of this genre of photography and can get you well on your way to becoming one.

Of course, you can use any camera — even a camera phone — to photograph a fixed subject. Wildlife, on the other hand, tends to move around and can be easily disturbed or scared away, especially when photographers enter their territory. Moose Peterson, wildlife photographer and author told Live Science "No photograph is worth sacrificing the welfare of a subject. We are guests in their home and if you present yourself this way and act in this manner, you will come back with the photograph."

Therefore, having the best wildlife photography cameras made specifically for the job is essential, especially once you've learned all the basics of wildlife photography. Then, once you've taken your images, the best laptops for photo editing can seriously up your photo editing game to get the best out of your images. To go a step further, having a pair of the best binoculars would also be incredibly beneficial for wildlife photography.

When photographing wildlife we often find ourselves in wild, remote places, which means an opportunity to see truly dark skies with little light pollution. Though many wildlife cameras can take good astro images, one of the best astrophotography cameras will perform better in low light and at night.

The quick list

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The best cameras for wildlife photography we recommend in 2024: Fully tested by our experts with hands-on, real-world experience

Best camera for wildlife photography overall

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When it comes to finding the perfect combination of detailed images, fast burst rate, good handling and accurate autofocus that meets the needs of the best wildlife photographers, we think the prize for the best camera for wildlife photography overall would have to go to the Nikon Z8.

Design: The Nikon Z8 is the first flagship camera from Nikon that doesn't have an in-built vertical grip, meaning it has much less of the weight and bulk of many of their other pro-level cameras, like the Z9. This opens it up to a much broader market, including wildlife photography, as the Z8 is much more pleasant to use handheld for longer periods. We thought the ergonomics were fantastic, with all the buttons being in easy reach where our fingers would naturally want to rest.

Performance: The 45.7MP sensor produces stunningly detailed images, even in low light. Thanks to its stacked sensor, it has better light-gathering ability and a faster readout speed to allow for faster shooting with less noise and more detail.

We used it to shoot wildlife during our Nikon Z8 review, and we were mightily impressed with the autofocus. While it wasn't perfect and there were times when it faltered, (although, not many), overall it's incredibly reliable and it finds, follows and focuses on moving subjects with insane accuracy. They've also now added a bird mode in their latest 2.0 firmware update — great news for bird photographers.

Functionality: You want a fast burst rate, too? You got it. While it can shoot at 120 FPS, the major caveat here is that those images are only 11MP, and in practicality, who is going to want to wade through hundreds of frames of basically the same image to find 'the one'? On a more realistic level, you can get 60 FPS with blackout between exposures, 30 FPS without blackout (although these are small JPEGs). For blackout-free RAW images, you'll have up to 20 FPS, which, for our money, is absolutely fine for the majority of wildlife shooters.

It's also fantastic for video, too. It can shoot up to 90 minutes of 8K 30p or 120 minutes of 4K 60p, which is leaps and bounds better than the overheating limitations of the Canon EOS R5. The tilt-only screen does limit its usability somewhat if you can't see the screen when shooting at certain angles, but it's not a dealbreaker.

• Read our full Nikon Z8 review

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Best autofocus for wildlife photography

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Design: One fantastic design feature of the A7R V is the articulating screen that would make a gymnast jealous. Most cameras either employ a tilt-only or flip-out screen, but the A7R V somehow has both, which is great for when you need to shoot at awkward angles.

Performance: One of its main selling points, and the area where the Sony A7R V wins out against most is its resolution. The whopping 61MP sensor captures breathtakingly detailed images, but it's worth keeping in mind that this also means very large files. We haven't posted a full review but we have thoroughly tested this camera, and the images we took are bright, sharp and true to life — we were blown away. The only camera that would rival it is the Sony A1 — it has a slightly lower 50MP resolution, however, the A1 has a superior stacked sensor.

If it's accurate autofocus you want, then look no further. With AI technology capable of predicting a subject's movements and even tracking their eyes when your subject isn't even looking at the camera, it's the best autofocus on the market right now bar none. It can detect any animal you point it at, and it even has a dedicated insect mode if you want to use it for macro wildlife photography.

Functionality: But we must address the elephant in the room — the burst rate is slow. It's capped at 7 FPS for RAW files and 10 FPS for JPEG images, which is the slowest on this list by a considerable margin, especially for such a new and capable camera. There is an argument to be made that you don't necessarily need a blisteringly fast burst rate due to the autofocus being so good that you will nail more of your shots by default, but this may not be the case if you want to shoot fast-moving animals.

• Read the full Sony A7R V review over at our sister site

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Best professional camera for wildlife photography

Design: Every inch of the Canon EOS R3 looks and feels premium. Like their other flagship models, it has a vertical grip to aid portrait orientation shooting, although, this is going to add a significant amount of bulk and weight to the camera.

Performance: The newest and most advanced camera on this list, the Canon EOS R3 is its top-tier professional mirrorless camera — and it's loaded with features that will be music to the ears of wildlife shooters. While it matches the Sony A1's 30 FPS burst shooting (and surpasses its buffer depth), its 24.1MP images are lower resolution than the 50.1MP shots from the Sony. That said, the A1's 30 FPS frame rate tends to fluctuate, while our experience with the R3 gave us true 30 FPS performance no matter what we were shooting.

Functionality: One thing the R3 has that no other camera can match is its Eye Control AF, which uses 8 low-power infrared LEDs in the viewfinder to map and track your eyeball. Once calibrated, all you have to do is look at your subject and the R3 puts the focus point on it — then you just half-press the shutter, the AF kicks in, and you shoot. This isn't intended for fast-moving subjects like birds, but if you're shooting a group of animals and you want to quickly focus on a specific one, this is the fastest way to move your focus points.

If that sounds a bit too Star Trek for you, the R3 has the same ghostly good animal AF system as the Canon EOS R5, so you get the same level of near-magic performance. Throw in 6K 60p RAW video and an optical smart controller that's faster than a joystick, this is a camera that's designed for premium performance.

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Best wildlife camera for beginners

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Design: The Canon EOS R8 holds the title of being Canon's lightest full-frame camera body so far. It weighs just 0.91 lbs / 414g so it's ideal for traveling, and in our Canon EOS R8 review we noted that even though it's light as a feather, the grip is deep enough to be comfortable to shoot with for long periods. Long wildlife lenses tend to be fairly heavy and bulky in nature due to their size and focal length, so having a lighter body can be advantageous for shaving a bit of weight off your overall setup.

Performance: During our testing, we thought the autofocus was great. It wasn't the best we've ever used, but we weren't expecting it to be for the price. It has animal eye detection which is ideal for wildlife shooters, although we found it didn't cope particularly well with forward-moving speedy animals, like dogs chasing a ball towards the camera or a bird flying directly toward us. For slower-moving animals though, it'll be great.

We also found it performed surprisingly well in low light, which will be advantageous for astro-shooting, general night-time cityscapes and wildlife shooting at dawn or dusk. It doesn't have image stabilization for stills (only in video), which may be a dealbreaker to some, however, many Canon RF lenses have image stabilization which you can rely on instead. It's also not fully weather sealed, only weather resistant — so you might want to think twice if you want to use it in wet or dusty conditions.

Functionality: The R8 actually has one of the faster burst rates on this list — capable of 40 FPS using the electronic shutter. If you'd rather use the mechanical shutter, it drops quite dramatically down to only 6 FPS, which does leave a little to be desired. It also has RAW burst mode which shoots 30 FPS bursts of RAW images, and there's a pre-shooting option that records images half a second before you fully press the shutter, giving you more leeway if you miss your shot by a hair. The RAW burst mode saves all the shots in the sequence to a single RAW roll, whereas conventional continuous shooting results in each shot being a separate file.

• Read our full Canon EOS R8 review

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Best hybrid camera for wildlife photography

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Design: The Canon EOS R5 is perhaps one of the most ergonomic cameras we've ever used — every dial and button is exactly where your fingers would want them to be, and it fits in the hand like a glove. Even though the R5 is aimed at more seasoned shooters, it's actually an incredibly intuitive camera and the body is very easily accessible and easy to shoot with.

Performance: If we had to choose one Canon camera with which to photograph wildlife, it would hands-down be the Canon EOS R5. This is mainly because of its incredible autofocus system, which is easily one of the best on the market right now — especially when it comes to photographing animals, where it is capable of body, face and eye detection.

On paper, Canon only claims that the R5 can track dogs, cats and birds. In our Canon EOS R5 review, though, there wasn't a single animal it couldn't recognize, track and lock onto. Lions, monkeys, turtles, iguanas, fish, skunks, meerkats, raccoons, sand squirrels, gophers, seals, Fennec foxes…if it's got a face and eyes, the R5 will put an AF point on it.

Functionality: Best of all, it can shoot images at up to 20 FPS with full face and eye detection — and it can do so silently, so as not to frighten your subjects. And when you consider that each RAW image is 45MP, that's insanely impressive.

Then there's the phenomenal 8K 30p; even if you don't shoot video, this is brilliant for stills as well, as you can extract a 35MP still frame from your footage, effectively giving you up to 30 FPS shooting. Just beware of the 4KHQ and 8K video recording limits, as the R5 is rather infamous for its overheating issues — for a more video-centric camera, check out the Canon EOS R5C.

• Check out our full Canon EOS R5 review

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Best DSLR camera for wildlife photography

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Not only is the D850 Nikon's best DSLR, but it's also the best all-round DSLR period. With its ultimate full-frame image quality combined with fast (though not lightning-fast) speed, this full-frame camera is the tool of choice for many advanced amateurs and professionals alike, as we mentioned in our full Nikon D850 review.

Design: We thought the Nikon D850 was sturdy and well-built and could certainly handle a lot of punishment with its full weather-sealing and metal construction.

We thought the touch ability on the screen was limited. You can activate the shutter and set focus, but you can't navigate through the menus by pressing the screen, which we thought was a little odd. It does, however, have illuminated buttons, which is great if you're photographing wildlife at dawn or dusk and can't quite see the camera properly.

Performance: Its 45.7MP resolution enables you to capture shots in jaw-dropping detail or to crop into your images and fill the frame if your lenses haven't quite got enough reach. The pixel-dense sensor also gives you full-frame 4K video, though sadly shooting in live view (whether for stills or video) means that you lose the fantastic phase detect autofocus and are instead stuck with subpar contrast-detect.

Functionality: The 7 FPS burst rate is the joint slowest of all cameras on this list (being the same as that of the Nikon P1000), but it can be boosted to 9 FPS if you attach the battery pack. That adds to the already significant cost of this camera, but if you're looking for the most complete DSLR then the D850 is your best bet. Still, when you consider that each image is 45.7MP, that's a pretty decent burst rate for the majority of wildlife photography situations. Besides, the buffer capacity is pretty generous at 200 shots, so you shouldn't run into any issues with shooting speed.

Another useful trick the D850 has up its sleeve is fully electronic silent shooting — this is endlessly useful for wildlife photography, particularly if you're out shooting at dawn or dusk and you don't want the sound of the camera shutter to scare the wildlife away.

• Read our full Nikon D850 review

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Best Micro Four-Thirds camera for wildlife photography

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Design: Micro Four Thirds cameras may not be your first thought when considering a wildlife camera, but there are many good reasons to look at the E-M1X. For starters, while it has a pro DSLR form factor, its smaller sensor means that lenses are much smaller, lighter and less expensive — meaning you have a smaller and lighter load to carry.

This is aided by the 2x crop factor or the sensor size, which means that you effectively double the focal length of your lenses — so if you're shooting on a 300mm lens, you immediately get a 600mm equivalent field of view. So if you get the M.Zuiko 300mm f/4 with a 2x teleconverter like we did during our Olympus OM-D E-M1X review, you have a 1200mm lens — and with the E-M1X's Sync IS technology, the camera and lens stabilization systems work in tandem, meaning that you can shoot tock-solid stills and video handheld, without a tripod.

Performance: The 20.4MP sensor may sound unimpressive at first, especially when compared to the other models in this list, but we actually found that it's more than enough for most purposes. However, it has a neat trick up its sleeve called High Res Shot mode, where it can boost the resolution to 50MP handheld or 80MP when mounted on a tripod. However, both these resolutions take a few seconds to expose, so they'd only be suitable for still subjects. Still, all the images in our review were shot at the native 20.4MP resolution, and we think they were plenty good enough.

Functionality: The camera shoots an astonishing 60 FPS with focus locked off, or a still-impressive 18 FPS with full AF/AE tracking. Its best trick for wildlife shooters, however, is Pro Capture; this starts buffering shots when you half-press the shutter, meaning that even if you're a fraction too late with your trigger finger, you've got the 15 frames before you fully depressed the shutter — meaning you never miss a shot, even when you miss it. We've taken E-M1X on safari, and it enabled us to get shots that we simply would have missed otherwise.

• Read our full Olympus OM-D E-M1X review

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Best bridge camera for wildlife photography

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If you're a newcomer to photography, and especially wildlife, one of the best ways to get started is with a bridge camera. These combine the handling of a DSLR, the convenience and ease of a compact camera, and the range of a superzoom lens.

Design: This camera is an all-in-one package that gives you a greater zoom range than you could achieve with a DSLR or mirrorless camera setup that costs thousands — but the tradeoff is image quality, as bridge cameras use much smaller image sensors, and the AF systems aren't as advanced as more expensive cameras.

Even though we described it as being 'built like a tank', it's actually surprisingly compact for what it can offer. And it isn't too heavy, either, weighing a lot less than a DSLR and we found it very comfortable to hold.

Performance: The Nikon Coolpix P1000 is about one thing, and one thing only: range. It offers a frankly absurd 24-3000mm zoom range — to put that into perspective, that's enough to shoot frame-filling shots of the moon, as we mentioned in our Nikon Coolpix P1000 review. This means that whether you're on safari or photographing birds at the local lake, nothing is going to be too far away.

Functionality: For some people, that reach alone makes this camera worthwhile. The compromises, however, are important to consider. Firstly, the P1000 possesses the smallest and lowest resolution image sensor on this list — so image quality and low light performance take a hit. The AF system and continuous shooting speeds aren't designed for fast action, either, so this is a camera best used for photographing still subjects rather than, say, birds in flight.

Still, that reach. It's impossible to achieve that on a DSLR or mirrorless camera, so if all you want is basically a telescope that takes pictures, it's right here.

• Read our full Nikon Coolpix P1000 review

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Best wildlife cameras: comparison

Contributing experts

Moose Peterson

Moose has dedicated his life to the education and protection of our wild heritage through his photography for over 40 years. He is a Nikon USA ambassador, recipient of the John Muir Conservation Award and research associate with the Endangered Species Recovery Project, to name a few. He has written 29 books and been published in over 143 magazines worldwide.

Wildlife Photography Cameras: FAQ

How we test the best cameras for wildlife photography

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To give readers the best buying advice, we put these cameras through complete and thorough testing in real-world situations to provide accurate, hands-on and unbiased reviews on how each product works and performs. Each camera is tested by either our experienced staff or freelance testers who have extensive experience in their field. While we do get each camera sent to us for a brief loan period by the manufacturer, we are in no way paid or compensated by them for a review, and all opinions expressed are 100% those of the reviewer and in no way influenced by another party.

To test a camera for wildlife photography, two of its most important features are burst rate and autofocus capabilities. During testing, our reviewers take the cameras to wildlife reserves, zoos and even use them on their own Pets to see how well the camera locates and maintains the focus on the animal. As many newer cameras have specific autofocus subject modes like cats/dogs, birds and even insects, we always aim to photograph as many different subjects as possible.

Burst rate is another very important test we conduct on each wildlife camera, as wildlife photographers want to be able to capture fast-moving animals or birds in flight without missing the shot, so we test the burst rate to see if it takes enough shots, and how long the camera can shoot before filling up the buffer.

We also consider the camera’s weight when held for long sessions, whether it has a silent shooting mode to avoid scaring animals away, battery life for long, boring sessions of waiting for animals to appear, sensor resolution, image stabilization and weather sealing, and low light capabilities for photographing wildlife at dawn or dusk.