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Have your say: Best gear of 2022

For the past few weeks, our readers have been voting on their favorite cameras and lenses released in 2023. Now that the first round of voting is over, it's time to reveal the winners. Notably, 2023 appears to be the first time a single brand came very close to a clean sweep across all the Reader's Choice award categories.

Remember, though, it isn't over just yet! It's now time to pick an overall winner. Don't miss your chance to cast your ballot – this one's for all the bragging rights.

Best prime lens Honorable Mention: Nikon Z 600mm F6.3 VR S

First up is the 2023 honorable mention for best prime lens, the Nikon Z 600mm F6.3 VR S, a super telephoto that's light enough for long periods of handheld use. It achieves this in part through the use of a size-reducing Phase Fresnel element, resulting in a lens that's 278mm (11") long and at 1,390g (3 lbs). It's compatible with Nikon's 1.4x and 2x teleconverters for even more reach.

In recent years, Nikon has done a great job designing compact prime lenses that put high-quality telephoto options within the budgetary reach of enthusiasts, and it looks like it's hit another home run with the 600mm F6.3 VR S.

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$4897 at B&H $4897 at Adorama $4797 at Amazon Best prime lens Winner: Nikon Z 135mm F1.8 S Plena

The 2023 Reader's Choice Award for best prime lens goes to the Nikon Z 135mm F1.8 S Plena, a mid-telephoto portrait prime for its Z-series cameras. It's Nikon's second Z-mount lens to carry a unique moniker, joining 2019's 58mm F0.95 S Noct, and is designed for sharpness, edge-to-edge brightness and round bokeh with minimal cat's eye effect. We were mighty impressed with this lens when shooting our pre-production sample gallery, and apparently, you were, too, because it won this category by a healthy margin.

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$2500 at B&H $2500 at Adorama Best zoom lens Honorable Mention: Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G

Receiving an honorable mention for best zoom lens is the Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G, an ultra-wide to normal, constant aperture zoom lens. On paper, it doesn't sound much wider than a standard 24-70mm zoom, but those extra four inches at the wide end make a world of difference. Optically, this lens is sharp wide open while providing pleasing bokeh.

It pairs particularly well with Sony's newest compact bodies, the A7C II and A7CR, providing a relatively compact yet versatile travel kit with a full-frame sensor. We're not surprised that readers selected this lens as one of their top picks of 2023.

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$1098 at B&H $1098 at Adorama $1098 at Amazon Best zoom lens Winner: Nikon Z 180-600mm F5.6-6.3 VR

The winner of the 2023 Reader's Choice Award for best zoom lens goes to the Nikon Z 180-600mm F5.6-6.3 VR, the spiritual successor to Nikon's F-mount 200-500mm F5.6 lens, covering a versatile telephoto to super telephoto range in a single optic. At 1955g (4.3 lbs) without its tripod foot, it's not the lightest lens in Nikon's lineup, but thanks to 5.5 stops of vibration reduction and a short, 70-degree zoom ring throw to switch between extreme focal lengths, it is pretty usable even handheld.

Along with the 600mm F6.3 that won the honorable mention in the prime lens category, the 180-600mm F5.6-6.3 is the second Nikon telephoto lens to win a Reader's Choice award this year.

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$1696 at B&H 1696 at Adorama Best camera Honorable Mention: Nikon Zf

The Nikon Zf ticks off almost all the essential boxes on an enthusiast camera spec sheet, but what makes this camera unique is its classic style, designed to mimic the look of the company's FM2 SLR from the early 1980s. The Zf isn't Nikon's first attempt at a retro camera, but it's the one many enthusiasts have been waiting many years to arrive, and with an MSRP at the $2000 price point, it's very price-competitive in its category.

We were impressed enough with this camera to give it the Best Enthusiast Camera award in our 2023 Annual Awards, and it looks like you agree that it's one of the best products of 2023.

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$1997 at B&H Photo $1997 kit at Adorama $1997 at Amazon Best camera Winner: Nikon Z8

The 2023 Reader's Choice Award winner for best camera goes to the Nikon Z8. We're not surprised to see this topping your list as 2023's best camera: it features the same 45MP stacked sensor and processor as its big brother, the Nikon Z9, but in a smaller body and much more approachable price point. In some ways, it's the mirrorless successor to the Nikon D850, one of the best DSLRs ever made, and we think it's an apt comparison.

In our 2023 Annual Awards, the Nikon Z8 walked away with two trophies: Best High-End Camera and 2023's Product of the Year. It looks like it may be trying to make a clean sweep of the Reader's Choice Awards as well.

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$3997 at B&H Photo $3997 at Adorama $3997 at Amazon Have your say - vote for Product of the Year!

You helped determine the winners in these individual categories, so now's the time to cast your vote in one last poll! Choose your favorite product from this list of winners and runners-up between now and Monday, January 8th. Watch for an announcement of the winning products shortly after the poll closes.

As always, thanks for casting your votes and being a part of our community throughout the year.

. Have your say$(document).ready(function() { Poll({"pollId":"2390005152","openForVoting":true,"mainElementId":"poll0","slot":null,"isSingleChoicePoll":true,"minNumberOfChoices":1,"maxNumberOfChoices":1}); })Have your say: 2023 Product of the YearNikon Z 135mm F1.8 S PlenaNikon Z 180-600mm F5.6-6.3 VRNikon Z 600mm F6.3 VR SNikon Z8Nikon ZfSony FE 20-70mm F4 GYou need to login to vote

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Photo: Shaminder Dulai

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The White River winds its way through the Uinta Basin in northeast Utah. Fracking sites, the Deseret Power Plant and the Uinta Mountains in the background.

Photo: Russel Albert Daniels

Russel Albert Daniels' aerial landscapes of the Uinta Basin are stunning, but if you spend a bit of time with the photographs, you will realize they reveal a much darker reality. His project, Mother Wound, takes a bird's eye view of the environmental damage that the fossil fuel industry has caused to the region – an area that includes the White River, which is a crucial watershed for the Colorado River.

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Daniels has spent the last two years working with nonprofit publications like Mother Jones, ProPublica and High Country News to capture the work. “Flying in a plane is not cheap, so none of this would have happened without all these nonprofit organizations,” he says.

Here, he talks with us about the challenges and benefits of shooting from the sky, and how this particular perspective is valuable for environmental stories.

Why was an aerial perspective an important journalistic tool for this particular story?

I think a lot of people have a romanticized image of what the West is—it's a pretty landscape that’s unharmed. But a lot of the environmental degradation is happening in areas you just can't see, and it's large-scale. Having aerial access allows you to see the full picture. You don't really get to see it when you're on the ground sitting at that pump jack, you still really can't see how many acres, hundreds of square miles of public land are being leased out to oil and gas companies.

I'm definitely not the first person to go on a plane and take photos of similar circumstances, so I knew the power of the photograph from the air. I wanted the work to draw people in by its beauty, but then, as they sat and looked at the photo, to start realizing what’s going on here – and it’s kind of a shocker. What’s hidden underneath the beauty is the reality of mineral extraction.

Fracking wastewater evaporation pools above the White River in the Uinta Basin in northeast Utah.

Photo: Russel Albert Daniels

What are the benefits of shooting from the Cessna rather than using a drone?

A drone is an incredible tool for journalism – it's affordable and pretty easy to use, but it has limitations. You can only fly to a particular height, it has a wide-angle perspective, and you usually see the horizon line. With the plane, we’re typically 1500 feet above ground, and as the photographer, it gives me the ability to use wide-angle lenses and telephoto lenses to zoom in and reveal more details.

I made a decision not to become a drone pilot. It’s a whole other class of photography that I'm not interested in getting into at this point. I feel like my talents and my skills are still photography. Another advantage of flying in a plane is that you can simply cover hundreds of miles within a few hours.

What challenges came with photographing from the window of the Cessna?

There are a few challenges. I’m working with nonprofit news organizations to do this work, and we reach out to nonprofit aviation services that often have funding to allow journalists to use their pilots and airplanes, often at no charge. The first challenge is having a good enough story that it's worthwhile for someone to use their resources and get us in the air. As a photographer, ideally, I want to go at particular times when the light is the best, but sometimes you are shooting in the overhead sun, which doesn't make for the most beautiful images.

Once you are on the plane you have to make the decision of where you want to sit. The passenger seat up front means you might be able to shoot out the window, but you really only have one or two angles to shoot from. You might get a plane with a seat in the back; if you sit there, you can shoot from either side, but shooting with my camera against the closed window can mean getting images with a lot of glare.

Russel Albert Daniels shooting from the window of a Cessna plane.

Photo: Bear Guerra

Is there particular gear that you like to bring along on these shoots?

There are these big rubber hoods that are real floppy, that go over your lens, and you just plop it up against the window. That eliminates a lot of the reflection and glare. Wearing all black really helps, too, since it’s the white objects on the plane’s interior that show up.

I like to have two camera bodies, one with a 24-70mm lens and a second with either an 80-200mm or an 80-110mm lens. I find that I like to zoom in and capture a tighter detail when shooting these images. I'm often eliminating the horizon line in some of these images, which almost automatically creates abstract images. When you remove the horizon, you lose that sense of reality. The abstraction allows for more of an impact when people finally get the bigger picture.

Fracking sites near the White River in the Uinta Basin in northeast Utah.

Photo: Russel Albert Daniels

How long are you typically up in the air?

These flights are often about three hours, and I’m definitely shooting for about 2-2.5 hours. My wrists are so tired by the end, but I’ve got to take advantage of the time. There's also just a lot of interesting things to see up there, so I'm going to get a shot, even if it's not particular to the story I'm working on.

Why is it important for you to keep going back and working all the angles of this particular story?

The climate crisis we're mitigating right now, it's evident, it's here and all the science has been pointing at it for a long time. It's a little slower than we were scared about it being. It didn’t come as fast or as some big apocalyptic nightmare. It's just a slow, ongoing dread that we are dealing with. The apocalypse is slow, and you still have to go to work.

I think it's important to show people the world and views of these landscapes that show the harm and the destruction that mineral extraction is doing because it's affecting us now. You can look at why that's happening and we can see that these oil and gas corporations and politicians are in bed together, and they are denying the wishes of many, many citizens to find other alternatives to this. We're going to continue to have problems no matter what, but this is obvious. Science has pointed this out. We're seeing the effects, and it's time to change it. If not, we're doomed.

Coal-powered Deseret Power Plant in Bonanza, Utah. The power plant was built in anticipation of the production of oil shale in the Uinta Basin.

Photo: Russel William Daniel

The photos are beautiful and abstract, but there’s an undeniable sadness in them. Do you find yourself needing time to reset and process after working on the project?

Yes, all the time. A lot of my work is done with the Native American territories and reservations that are suffering the most; it’s happening on their land or just adjacent to it in their ancestral territories. So I'm also dealing with that trauma that's just being passed through. It's not just the climate, it's people too. And it's not just native people, it's often just rural communities that happen to be next to these mineral extraction sites.

I don't always deal with it the best way. Sometimes I just try to forget about it. Having Native American ancestry, I do have tools to ceremony and different personal practices and community practices that I’m able to do that recenter me. Sometimes, having a beer helps in the short term. Talking about it with other people and friends helps too. The work is also healing in its own right. Showing what’s going on, showing my frustration with the world, and doing my part to help resolve it.

A photo zine of the Mother Wound work can be purchased through Russel Daniels website. Two of the images from the project were acquired by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts earlier this year and are included in its current exhibition Shaping Landscape: 150 Years of Photography in Utah. The work is also currently on view in downtown Salt Lake City, displayed publicly on the Temporary Museum of Permanent Change’s 14 placards.