The Most Popular Secondary Digital Cameras Are….

Last week here on dPS we asked readers about their ‘secondary cameras’ in an attempt to work out 2 things:

1. whether having a secondary camera is commonplace today
2. what cameras are most common as secondary cameras

The response was overwhelming with over 400 comments so far – almost all of which affirmed our suspicion that dPS readers do in fact actively use secondary cameras.

When it comes to the ‘which camera’ question – the results were not quite as clear. There were a number of cameras that appeared more often than others but there were over 100 different models mentioned.

I spent a few hours over the weekend analyzing the responses given and it seems that the cameras mentioned fell into one of 3 categories:

1. Old Cameras – perhaps the most common response from readers belonged in this category. They went something like – ‘yes I have a secondary camera, its my old Canon 400D which I had before I bought my 5D Mk II’.

2. Camera Phones – perhaps unsurprisingly with the advancements in camera phone technology were responses from readers saying that they use their iPhone, HTC Droid, Nokia N8 etc as a secondary camera (by the way they were the most common 3 camera phones mentioned).

3. Dedicated Secondary Cameras – this was the category I was most interested in – people who have invested specifically in a second digital camera. There was quite a large group of readers who responded in this way – they almost all seemed to want a smaller camera as an alternative for their bulkier DSLR gear which they didn’t always want to haul around.

In most cases these were either feature rich compact cameras or medium sized cameras or four thirds format cameras.

Interestingly in this last category there were a number of camera models that stood out from the pack and which were mentioned multiple times.

Here’s the most common responses (and I’ve linked to each on Amazon and B&H photo for those of you in the market for your own secondary camera):

1. Canon Powershot S95 (Get a price on B&H Photo)
2. Canon Powershot G12 (Get a Price on B&H Photo) – the older G10 and G11 were also mentioned numerous times)
3. Fujifilm Finepix X100 (Get a Price at B&H Photo)
4. Panasonic Lumix DMC LX5 (Get a Price at B&H Photo)
5. Olympus PEN E-PL1 (Get a Price at B&H Photo) – the newer E-PL2 and E-PL3 were also mentioned numerous times)
6. Panasonic Lumix GF2 (Get a Price at B&H Photo) – Panasonic Lumix GF1 was also mentioned by quite a few people)
7. Sony NEX 5 (Get a Price at B&H Photo) – other NEX models were mentioned including the NEX C3)

Notes about this list: this list shows cameras mentioned from most popular to least popular. It is generated from responses from readers on our previous blog post, facebook and on Twitter.

It also should be said that the top 3 cameras mentioned were mentioned quite a few times more than any other cameras.