What gear I use
This page shows a breakdown of what gear I currently use for creating my landscape images.
Camera and Lenses
Sony A7RIII - A real workhorse of a camera, the A7RIII ticked all the boxes for me when it came time to upgrade from my old trusty A7. With beautiful high dynamic range RAW files, weather sealing, high levels of customisation and overall ease of use I find this camera to be a perfect fit to the way I work.
Sony FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM - This is my go-to lens, it’s almost always on my camera and is what I use to capture the majority of my images. With such a wide focal length this is about all you’ll need for the majority of grand landscapes. It is quite a heavy lens but certainly makes up for that with the image quality it provides.
Sony Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA - A compact and lightweight prime which is perfect as a midway point between my wide angle and telephoto lenses. One of the sharpest lenses I’ve used.
Sony FE 70-200mm F4 G OSS - An essential lens for picking out smaller scenes and getting more intimate with the landscape whilst being light enough not to completely weigh your bag down whilst hiking. A great lens with superb image quality.
Tripod and Ball Head
Benro Mach3 TMA38CL - After having my previous Manfrotto tripod for a number of years, I found myself looking for something a bit taller and more sturdy. The Benro Mach3 certainly meets this criteria, it’s a solid tripod with more than enough height for shooting the fells. It also doesn’t weigh a tonne which is always a positive.
Manfrotto 494 Center Ball head - Arca Swiss Adaptor Link - I’ve had this ball head for a number of years now and never had any issues with it, it’s nothing special but it is small, lightweight and holds all my gear securely so I can’t complain. I switched to using Arca Swiss plates last year so I picked the adapter for it.
Camera Bag
​Shimoda Action X50 with Medium DSLR Core Unit - An absolute beast of a camera bag with more space than I could ever need. A real solid bag overall, it’s perfect for lugging all my gear and clothing around the Lake District Fells.
Accessories
Shimoda Filter Wrap 100 - Perfect for keeping my filters clean and protected, with enough room for 4 filters and a few other pouches for other accessories such as batteries and memory cards.
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Hoya HD Digital UV Filters - More of a reassurance than a necessity, I use these filters to protect the elements of my lenses as a lot of photographers do, I’ve found the Hoya HD filters to be pretty tough pieces of glass with no noticeable effect to image quality.
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Hoya Fusion One CIR-PL - The only filter I tend to use when I have the chance. I use the circular polarizing filter to cut glare on water, deepend skies and increase saturation in some scenes. Always handy to keep in the camera bag.
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SanDisk Memory Cards - I’ve always used SanDisk memory cards and can’t really fault them. These 128gb cards are ideal for use in the A7RIII as the file sizes can be quite big. I carry a number of spares of these around as you can never have enough memory cards.
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Generic Camera Shutter release - I’ve had a few of these over the years, I use them for when I’m bracketing, they enable me to take multiple exposures without touching the camera and introducing camera shake to my images. I don’t use any particular brand here as the basic ones all pretty much do the same thing.