statistics

Stats and Insights From the Websites of the Top 100+ Photographers

What are famous photographers doing right on their websites? Or better yet, what are they doing awfully wrong despite being successful? In this detailed research report, I thoroughly reviewed over 100 individual websites (from the most well-known photographers out there) to try to uncover all of that.

US Camera Sales Dropped by 64% Last Month; Only Luggage is Doing Worse

As the coronavirus pandemic brings the world economy to its knees, retail intelligence firm Stackline put together a report identifying the 100 fastest growing and 100 fastest declining industries based on e-commerce data from March. No surprise, the outlook is especially grim for cameras.

Using Instagram Stats to Choose Your Next Camera Lens

Photographer Jason Webber recently embarked on a little statistical experiment. He wanted to see if he could use stats from his Instagram photos to choose the 'perfect' lens purchase by identifying the focal lengths he uses most often, the holes in his lens lineup, and what features he needs to prioritize.

Wedding Photographers Spend Only 4% of Their Work Time Taking Photos, Survey Shows

UK company Your Perfect Wedding Photographer—a website that vets and connects wedding photographers with interested couples—has released the results of their fourth annual photographer survey, and it contains some interesting info about how much photographers are making, the brands they're using, how they spend their work time, and much more.

How Instagram’s Photo Filters Are Used by Top Users

My name is Stefan, and I'm the CTO of the marketing firm Relatable. To facilitate execution of global, large-scale influencer marketing campaigns, we rely a lot on data to give us insights. Using a sample of about 2 million Instagram accounts (with a minimum of 1,000 followers) and 40 million posts, I’ve been digging deep, compiling statistics, finding insights, and just discovering some quirky facts. In this article, I'll share some of my findings.

The State of News Photography in 2016

We now know which cameras top photojournalists around the world are using these days, but what are they saying about the state of their industry? A newly published study uses responses from nearly 2,000 photographers to reveal the current condition of the photojournalism landscape.

The State of Photo Theft in 2016

The folks over at the image tracking service Pixsy have released an infographic about the state of photo theft in 2016. As 64% of you have personally experienced, photo theft remains a serious and widespread problem in our digital age.

The Numbers Behind Selfie Deaths Around the World

Back in September 2015, we reported that selfies now cause more deaths worldwide than shark attacks. As people become more and more daring in their attempt to snap the perfect self-portrait to share online, there are more stories of those picture-takers getting seriously injured or killed.

Here's a closer look at the numbers behind this disturbing trend.

This is How Camera Gear Was Stolen in 2015

The anti-theft gear registry LensTag just provided us with this new look at how camera gear was stolen over the past year. As you can see from the pie chart above, car and home break ins are still the biggest way thieves are targeting cameras and lenses: they accounted for over half of all thefts reported to LensTag in 2015.

Here’s How Camera Brands Have Fared on Flickr Over the Past 5 Years

Flickr recently gathered up photo and camera data to review the past year, and now the company is doing some number crunching to reveal major trends in the cameras used by the photographer community.

The graph above shows how the popularity of major camera brands have changed over the past half decade.

There Are Now 8x More People Taking Pictures than 10 Years Ago

Camera sales haven't been doing too well in recent years, but that hasn't kept picture taking from exploding. While the dedicated camera industry has seen year-on-year declines, smartphone photography has turned everyone into a casual photographer: there are now 8 times as many picture takers worldwide than there were 10 years ago.

The Importance of Cameras in the Smartphone War

When new smartphones are announced these days, the camera quality and specs are usually front and center. If you're wondering why manufacturers focus so much on mobile photography, check out the chart above: taking photos is the most used feature of smartphones alongside text messaging.

The Most Popular Cameras on Flickr in 2014

What are the most popular cameras used in the Flickr community? Now that 2014 is in the past, the photo sharing service has done some serious crunching on EXIF data to figure out which cameras were the most popular among its users over the course of the year. Here's a look into the findings.

Maps Showing the Pro Photography Landscape in the United States

What is the current state of the professional photography industry in the United States? Back in April 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released statistics about the photography profession from May 2013. The data offers an interesting look into where photographers are living and how much they're earning.

10 Best Cities for Working Photographers in the US

You carry a camera everywhere because you just never know when something or someone worthy of having its picture taken will appear. You also work plenty of weddings and events, or you may be a photo journalist for a newspaper. You are a photographer, and are always on the lookout for beauty. But what makes a city good for a working photographer? While it’s important that there are plenty things to photograph, these statistics are equally relevant as well.

Mosaic Breaks Down the Average Size of a Lightroom Catalog

Here at PetaPixel we enjoy the crunching of numbers. So, naturally, when Mosaic told us about a blog post they had done recently that broke down some Lightroom catalog statistics, we were intrigued.

With "tens of thousands" of Lightroom catalogs synched to their service, they sampled a random 3,000 of those to come up with the average size of a Lightroom catalog. And in the end, they were actually quite surprised by the results.

Visualizing the Trends and Patterns of the World Through Instagram

Living smack in the middle of the information age, we're well acquainted with the incredible amount of data and statistics gathered and thrown around on a daily basis. And with the advent of social networking, the amount of publicly available data about society has only increased.

These networks are a treasure trove of information for better understanding the underlying trends and habits of people. Trends that would otherwise go unseen. One research project in particular, called Phototrails, is trying to spot these trends by gathering insights from that photography-oriented social media site many of us love to hate: Instagram.

Crunching the Numbers on the World Press Photo Photographers’ Gear

Each year, the breakdown of gear usage statistics by some of the largest news agencies and associations makes itself public; and this year is no exception, thanks to this infographic provided by hastalosmegapixeles.

Looking through the infographic, we get a great look at what gear the press photography pros prefer when they're out in the field shooting World Press Photo award-winners.

State of the Blog Address and a Preview of Coming Attractions in 2014

First things first: Happy New Year! Whether you're in Berkeley, CA, Bucharest, Romania or Shanghai, China, it's now 2014 for everyone, and we want to start off the new year by thanking you all for a phenomenal 2013. You guys and gals are the reason we get up in the morning and stay up nights wracking our brains to figure out how we can make this site the best photo blog in the world.

Crunching the Numbers: Four Insights We Can Glean from Camera Sales Data

With every passing year, the digital camera sales dataset offered by the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA) grows more comprehensive. These records are made available to the public by this coalition of camera manufacturers which includes Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony, Sigma, Ricoh, Olympus, and dozens of other recognizable brands. Since 2002, they've been improving and increasing the scale of their database, which now separates digital cameras into fixed-lens, mirrorless and DSLR categories, and reports sales figures for different regions.

It sometimes seems that commentators are primarily interested in the CIPA data to prove just how far up a creek camera manufacturers are so far this decade. But these depressing pronouncements are just scratching the surface. Here's some other things the data shows:

Stock Site Stats Reveal the Most Popular Cameras Among Stock Photographers

About a week ago, the stock photography website Dreamstime got in touch with us to offer us some exclusive information. Having recently added a "search-by-camera" feature, they had compiled a huge amount of statistical data on the most popular cameras being used by their 150,000+ contributing photographers.

Well, keeping in mind that Francis Bacon once said "knowledge is power," we told them to go ahead and send the stats over. What we received was a veritable smörgåsbord of interesting (and perhaps useful) information.

Nikon Updates Vibration Reduction Stats to Comply With New Standard

This month, the Consumer & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) released a new standard to help make better sense of the world of image stabilization. Theoretically, the standard will make sure that all manufacturers test and report image stabilization statistics the same way, so you can better compare between lens brands.

And although we haven't heard anything from any other company, Nikon has already hopped aboard and released a list of CIPA-compliant numbers.

Vine Adds Android Front Camera Support as Use Dips Due to Instagram Video

One of the hashtags that made its way around the Internet after Instagram video was announced last week was #RIPVine. That, of course, was referencing Twitter's 6-second looping video app that many believed would now be brought low by Instagram's new 15-second capabilities.

Unfortunately for Twitter, recent statistics seem to confirm this belief, even as Vine fights back by adding more features.

Vine Picks Up Steam, Passes Instagram in Total Daily Twitter Shares

Earlier today, we shared the news that SnapChat may be on the way to a $1 billion valuation even as the company moves aggressively towards a monetization scheme. Now, it's Vine's turn to shine, as the 6-second video sharing app proves its worth by blowing past Instagram in total daily Twitter shares.

Video Breaks Down the Sheer Number of Photos Uploaded Every Minute

In a recent video, the people over at BuzzFeed decided to put numbers to all of the things that happen online every single minute. And in-between facts regarding how many Google Searches and Tweets go out every 60 seconds, they also included a few really interesting photo facts.

Brides Often Regret Not Spending More on Wedding Photography

If you're set to get married soon and are in the process of planning for the big day, here's a tip that might save you from some sadness further down the road: don't go cheap on the photography if you can help it. It turns out that spending too little on photography is one of the biggest regrets brides have after their wedding, while spending too much rarely causes remorse.

For a wedding issue that will soon be hitting newsstands, New York Magazine created an infographic titled "What They Would Have Done Differently." The magazine asked one hundred recent brides about what they'd do differently if they could go back in time.

Black Internet Users Use Instagram More Than White People, Study Finds

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of a survey this week that sheds light on social media use among Americans. One of the networks they asked participants about was Instagram.

After surveying 1,802 Internet users in late 2012, the study found that 13% of Internet users use the mobile photo sharing service. It also found that the service is "especially appealing" to "Adults ages 18-29, African-Americans, Latinos, women, [and] urban residents."