Top 5 Best Professional Cameras in 2025
These are the best professional cameras, based on my testing them in professional environments (and on professional shoots)
As a reviewer and professional photographer, I have spent years testing the top professional cameras. And quickness is a must for every camera, regardless of your line of work. I need my camera to be able to quickly turn on, focus, and respond in order to keep up with the demands of my business, whether I’m taking portraits for a customer or covering a sporting event.
There are undoubtedly further considerations, ranging from battery life and buffer size to weather proofing and lens choices. I’ve been a professional photographer for more than ten years, and in the last six years, I’ve tested the top professional cameras for this website, taking well over 200,000 pictures.
After evaluating and contrasting these cameras in practical settings, photographing everything from amateur athletes to Olympic teams, the Canon EOS R5 Mark II is the best professional camera overall. For high-end fashion, beauty, and product work, it has a 45MP resolution (upscalable in-camera to 180MP); 8K 60p / 4K 120p video to cover high-resolution video; strong weather sealing and sturdy construction to withstand prolonged all-purpose use; and 30fps burst shooting with amazing AF to capture fast action.
Even if this camera is suitable for many professions, not all of them require it! For instance, I suggest the Panasonic S5 IIX for jobs involving only video. Additionally, I would recommend the Canon EOS R6 Mark II as a comparable all-purpose camera at a significantly lower cost if you’re on a tight budget or are just beginning as a professional. Therefore, these are the top professional cameras available today that I personally suggest.
Table of Contents
Best overall
1. Canon EOS R6 Mark II
best budget
2. Canon EOS R5 Mark II
Best curved
3. Nikon D850
Best 32:9
4. Panasonic Lumix S5 II X
best bendable
5. Sony A1
1. Canon EOS R6 Mark II
The R6 Mark II is, in my opinion, a great starting point for those who have recently become professional or are going to do so. Although I have personally invested in Canon’s R system, which I think is the ideal platform, its top-tier cameras are highly priced.
With the R6 Mark II, you may start with a fantastic all-purpose camera and start collecting Canon RF lenses. Later, when you have the time or money, you can upgrade to a camera with more features that is tailored to your needs. But with the specs of the R6 Mark II, you might never have to! For the most part, the 24.2MP resolution is sufficient (I’ve taken a lot of two-page magazine spreads, for example), and the blazing 40fps burst shooting surpasses some of the top wildlife cameras!
As strong as it is for stills photography, the amazing Dual Pixel CMOS AF locks onto your subject and maintains focus like you have a dedicated focus puller. The 4K HQ video is oversampled from 6K for beautiful sharpness. When you add in the amazing in-body stabilization (up to eight stops), you get excellent performance for the cost.
The only drawbacks are that third-party autofocus lens alternatives are not available, and the camera still uses SD cards, which may be advantageous because they are less expensive than CFexpress but slower and less dependable.
2. Canon EOS R5 Mark II
I purchased the original EOS R5 using my own funds because I was so impressed, and the Mark II is so excellent that I might have to do it again!
The Canon EOS R1 would be my first pick if I didn’t require the resolution because it performs better in autofocus. But the R5 Mark II’s built-in 45MP resolution is sufficient for any task, and if I need more, I can use Canon’s incredible Neural Network Image Processing to upscale photos to 180MP in-camera without sacrificing quality.
But resolution isn’t the only thing this camera is about. The new Dual Pixel Intelligent AF, Canon’s flagship technology, is the best autofocus available, and it’s the best I’ve ever dealt with.
In addition to being accurate, the camera employs AI algorithms to detect and predict the main players as if by magic when you activate Action Priority AF for particular sports (at the moment, basketball, soccer, and volleyball).
Additionally, it can produce bursts at up to 40 frames per second, but you can adjust the frame rate to whatever suits you best, such as 15 frames per second, 7 frames per second, or 3 frames per second. If you don’t need or want to, you don’t have to take a million pictures every time.
With its capacity to record in 8K 60p RAW, the Mark II goes beyond the 8K video heritage of the original R5. You’ll need the optional cooling grip to shoot large files, but the film is amazing and the uncanny AF makes shooting alone a delight.
In relation to video, the camera includes a helpful feature for experts: it can record both images and videos at the same time. Although there are certain limitations, like only being able to view FullHD, this might be a useful tool for news reporters or anybody else wishing to confirm the accuracy of their work.
3. Nikon D850
Although there are better DSLRs for certain uses (for instance, the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III is better for pure sports), the powerful Nikon D850 is the best all-around DSLR.
With 45.7MP stills and a continuous shooting speed of 7 frames per second (or 9 if you get the optional battery grip), this resolution beast is still a good performer for quick action shots like wildlife. Compared to its mirrorless competitors’ AI-enabled AF, which boasts state-of-the-art subject identification and tracking, the autofocus technology is rudimentary; nonetheless, its robustness more than makes up for its lack of intelligence. Even though the D850 might not identify every type of wildlife on its own, once I tell it where to focus, I know I can rely on it.
There are benefits to DSLRs, but the main one for me is the far longer battery life, even if mirrorless cameras have more sophisticated technology. This camera has never died on me while I was shooting! Despite being larger and heavier than mirrorless bodies, it is also more durable and strong, and its chunkiness helps it balance with large professional lenses.
The largest benefit is probably that Nikon’s F mount is fully developed, so all of the lenses you could possibly need are already out there and will be less expensive than their mirrorless counterparts, particularly when purchased used.
4. Panasonic Lumix S5 II X
Nowadays, almost any current camera can record a small amount of video; in fact, your camera phone is most likely the greatest gadget for impromptu daily photography. However, the Panasonic Lumix S5 IIX is the ideal camera for the task if I need to record videos of a high caliber.
It is extremely versatile due to its open gate recording feature, which allows you to output in any number of aspect ratios as required by the brief. Panasonic has also taken the intriguing decision to not support 8K as much as its competitors have, and I can understand why given that 6K is actually the sweet spot.
6K gives you the more pixels without the additional processing (and storage) hassles of 8K, whether you’re oversampling your 4K or using the higher resolution to crop in to create alternative compositions or digital camera movements.
In terms of codecs, compression, and other output possibilities, the S5 IIX is also unmatched. You won’t get better unless you look at specialist cinema cameras, which provide HDMI RAW output, SSD recording, Apple ProRes RAW, Blackmagic B-RAW, 4:2:2 10-bit All-Intra, and LongGOP at all resolutions up to Cinema 4K. You can also stream at up to 4K 60p (over LAN, or FullHD 60P via WiFi).
5. Sony A1
In addition to the enthusiast-focused A7 series, Sony offers four different types of Alpha cameras, each catering to a distinct set of needs: the A7R is for resolution (the Sony A7R V delivers 61MP), the A7S is for video, and the A9 is for speed (the Sony A9 III achieves an amazing 120fps burst rate).
The Sony A1, the company’s flagship camera, aims to fulfill every requirement. And it does a fantastic job of providing all-around pro performance with its 50.1MP sensor, 8K video, and 30fps bursts, in my opinion. (As you are undoubtedly aware, the Sony A1 II has been produced; however, the price difference is significant despite the tiny differences, therefore I advise purchasing the original model because it is far more affordable.)
In addition to having the highest resolution on this list, it can take 199MP pictures using the pixel shift technique (however, like the Canon EOS R5, it requires everything to stay perfectly motionless for the mode to function). As for the promised 5.5 stops of in-body stabilization, that doesn’t feel quite there to me either. Sony has the weakest IBIS system, in my experience, and while you’ll get better performance than a completely unstabilized system, don’t expect it to be on par with other manufacturers. It also promises 30 frames per second shooting at full 50.1MP resolution, but there are quite a few caveats to achieve this (from the lens you’re using to the AF mode to the file type).
The 8K 30p and 4K 120p video and the hybrid CFexpress A/SD card slots, which allow you to enjoy mirrored memory card performance regardless of the format you’re dealing with, are still plenty of advantages, though.
Sony also has a clear edge over other mirrorless manufacturers because the E-mount is the most popular and well-established on the market, offering a vast variety of native Sony glass in addition to a plethora of more exotic and reasonably priced third-party alternatives.
Which camera is used by the majority of professionals?
Workhorses like the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III, Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, Nikon D850, and Nikon D6 are still used in professional settings because professionals were the latest to switch from DSLRs to mirrorless cameras. But those days are undoubtedly coming to an end.
These days, mirrorless cameras—which are primarily prejudiced toward Canon and Sony—are the most widely used cameras during events like athletic events, weddings, and safaris. Along with the cameras on this list, news, sports, and wildlife photographers frequently use cameras like the Canon EOS R3, Sony A9 II, and Sony A9 III.
What is the megapixel count of professional photographers?
The profession and the photographer themselves determine this. The best quality and resolution are achieved by fine art photographers, archival photographers, and many commercial photographers. Medium format cameras, such the 151MP Phase One XF IQ4, the 100MP Fujifilm GFX 100 II, and the Hasselblad X2D 100C, are typically used for this.
The mid-20MP range is ideal for sports photographers. They can shoot at absurdly high speeds (like 120 frames per second on the Sony A9 III) without having to deal with a mound of unreasonable file sizes because to this.
Although 60MP models like the Sony A7R V offer even higher resolution, landscape and portrait photographers are increasingly gravitating toward the 45MP models from Canon and Nikon. Nevertheless, professional cameras are more than just megapixels, and you can’t judge a camera or a photographer by the quantity of pixels in their images.