New Photography Gear never made a photographer better, only imagination, hard work, practice and creativity can do that..
I’ll start by saying this list is comprised only of kit that I use regularly. There is nothing controversial here but I would say straight out that I don’t think there is any really significant difference between Sony, Canon and Nikon cameras and lenses these days. My preference for Canon is based on experience and my ownership of their lenses. The fact is that after ten years of commercial shooting, I know exactly how to nail a shot true to my vision with Canon cameras. Some will prefer Fuji, others Nikon, probably for exactly the same reason.
I’ve used DSLRs since the beginning of time. I have a 5D mk IV as a backup to my newly acquired R5, I miss the 5Ds which although heavy, was solid as a rock and offered pretty good resolution at 50mp. I’ve invested recently in a Canon R7 to shoot wildlife, We’ll see how that goes. Apart from the R5 and the R7, I have a 5D Mk IV and a 550D.
The Canon 550D has the same 18 MP APS-C sensor as the old 7D. Although it lacked the dual processor of the 7D, it is still a decent camera. When I opted to upgrade to full frame, it was the 7D that I sold. I had my 550D converted to infrared a couple of years ago, and it’s given the camera a new lease of life.
Action Cameras – I upgraded the Go Pro 6, replacing it with a DJI Action 3 which I have to say is a much easier camera to use. For Vlog content I’m using the Canon R50v. In terms of documenting some of my location scouting expeditions and how-to videos, it’s a marvel.
A lot of my kit has been bought second hand, the prices of new equipment these days is terrifying! I regularly buy and sell kit as a means of keeping things current. I don’t use E-Bay because it’s too stressful. Instead I use a company called MPB who helpfully arrange all the couriers to pick up and deliver kit, offer reasonably good prices for your old gear and charge reasonable prices for new kit, depending on condition. I’ve never been disappointed. These links will take you to the nearest territory they operate in.
Update: May 2023 – I’ve just acquired a Ricoh GR III x for wandering around Granada and scouting locations. 24mp, APS-C sensor and 40mm equivalent prime lens. Makes so much more sense in the city than lugging the 5D around all day.
Update: August 2024 – I’ve traded the Ricoh GR III x in for a used Canon G1x Mk III. This might seem a little mad when you consider that the Canon is discontinued, but is partially weather sealed and way more robust than the Ricoh. I use it for scouting locations as well as street photography so the weather proofing is very welcome. It’s the best spec in the Canon small camera range (24Mp APS-C Sensor) and although they have said they will continue making these cameras, the rumoured Mk IV has never materialised. I’ve read too many stories of the Ricoh breaking now. Lovely images, but the Canon does that in spades.
Update April 2025 – The Canon G1x Mk III has been traded in for the new Canon R50v, expected in May. This is a camera optimised for video, it shoots 4k which the G1x didn’t and I think now is the right time to trade in, before the value goes through the floor..
Update May 2025 – The workhorse, my Canon 5Ds has been traded in for a new Canon R5 II – I’ve been a long time embracing mirrorless for my main photography and I have to say that my first impression of the R5 is that witchcraft must have been employed! It’s an amazing camera, enabling decisions to be actioned so much more quickly than with DSLRs. I will be doing a review once I’ve got to know the camera a bit better.
Cameras
Canon EOS 5D Mk IV
Canon EOS R5 II
Canon EOS R7
Canon 550D with 720nm Infrared Filter
Video Cameras
This section does require a few words of explanation. The speed of progress in the last five or six years has been extraordinary, where we shot with the venerable Canon C100, dragging unmanageable amounts of cumbersome tripods, sound gear and cables, we now shoot with the new Canon EOS R50v and the DJI Pocket 3. Both deliver pristine 4k footage and neither weighs as much as a bag of sugar. The DJI Mic works with both of them and should I wish to record with the Canon R5 then I can do that too, utilising the same setup.
Canon EOS R50v
DJI Pocket 3
Lenses, Lights & Sound
As a commercial photographer, I picked my lenses on quality for the job at hand. I rationalised my lenses in 2023, swapping out a bunch of Canon primes for better zooms, updating the 100-400 for the vastly superior mk II, switching a 17-40mm for a 16-35mm and acquiring a 70-200mm f/4 mk II for hiking. I’ve also updated my Canon TS_E 24mm for the mark II version and acquired a TS-E 17mm for professional work.
Lights are really for studio work, and I got great value from my Elinchrom kit. The LumeCube lights are great for lighting video, getting light into places you struggle with.
Regarding sound, I’ve settled on a vlogging setup that uses DJI Mic for reasons including portability, connectivity to multiple types of camera (Canon, DJI Drone, Action 3) and the awesome charging box. It edges out the Rode Wireless Go II despite being more expensive,
Zoom Lenses
Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye
Canon EF 11-24mm f/4L
Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III
Canon EF 24-70 mm f/2.8L II
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS II
Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS
Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS II
APS-C Lenses
SIGMA 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Canon RF
Canon EFS 10-22 mm f/3.5
Canon EFS 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
Canon RFS 14-30mm
Lights
Godox V1 Flash
Sound
Prime Lenses
Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L
Canon EF 180mm f/3.5L
Tilt/Shift Lenses
Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II
Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L
Extenders
Canon EF 1.4x III Extender
Canon EF 2x III Extender
Raynox DCR-250 Macro Attachment
Filters
After many years of using Lee Filters exclusively I have changed to using Kase Magnetic filters which are optically identical, lighter, more robust and crucially, take up less space in my bag.
Circular Polariser
ND 8
ND64
ND1000
Tripods, Heads, Gimbals and Drones
The Giottos MTL was a great studio tripod that served me well for ten years, too heavy to take to the mountains though.. The Vitruvium was the innovative tripod in its day, and remains one of the smallest and lightest travel tripods I’ve seen; both of these have lasted me ten years now. The Bushman I bought for 360 shoots and the Gorillapods for just-in-case scenarios. I’ve redeployed the Gorillapods now for video. They suit the DJI Pocket perfectly, opening up the range of viewpoints quite dramatically.
I sold my DJI Phantom 4 and upgraded to a Mavic 3 classic in April 2023 – the deciding factor was size and weight. I can pack the Mavic 3 into my photography bag with no problem.
You need decent tripod heads for stability. My three-way Giottos Head was perfectly acceptable in the studio, but outside is a whole different ballgame because of the weight. I bought Acratech heads and a Feisol tripod recently for my landscape and panoramic photography and although they were expensive, it’s money well spent. I also use Kirk Photographic base plates and Kirk L Brackets that fits the cameras like a glove. By far the best design I’ve seen.
Loupe
Hoodman Liveview for 3″ & 3.2″ screens
Camera Bags and Storage
You may ask yourself, what is the difference between Urban and Hiking bags? In the UK, not so much, but I discovered very quickly in Spain that a bag that can cope with your camera equipment, food, and clothes, even a sleeping bag, tent etc, is going to be used far more often than in the UK.
Bags, Holsters, Straps and Clips
F-Stop Tilopa 50L DuraDiamond (for camping trips)
F-Stop Ajna 37L DuraDiamond (for hiking)
F-Stop Guru UL 25L (day bag)
F-Stop Navin Camera Holster
Think Tank Retrospective 15 Backpack
Think Tank Retrospective 30 Shoulder bag
Peak Design Capture
Peak Design Slide
Peak Design Slide Lite
Peak Design Cuff
Processing
Adobe still lead the way in post production and taking a lead with AI enhanced tooling. They are consolidating their position as essential creative tools.
My software journey has been built around Adobe for fifteen years. Professionally I use Capture One in the studio and Photoshop to process. Since moving to Spain and embracing landscape photography I’ve been experimenting with DXO PhotoLab and Affinity Photo.
I’m still a big fan of DxO Pure RAW. It’s the best pre processing software I’ve found in terms of camera/lens corrections and noise removal. Viewpoint is better than anything in the Adobe stable and the Nik Collection also has much to offer – I haven’t found anything as good as Silver Efex Pro and the contrast tools in Color Efex are excellent..
In terms of a settled workflow, for 90% of my pictures I’ll use a Lightroom catalogue to store and manage the photos but I feed them through Pure Raw to get the basic lens corrections done before I start processing. I’m not sure if this is a craft thing or an indulgence but I’m increasingly using Photoshop or more recently, Affinity Photo for all of my processing. I use the Lumenzia panel in Photoshop to dodge and burn, create luminosity masks and WebSharp Pro for outputting.
Software
I have two workflows that I use regularly. This has been accidental in that a few years ago I started looking for an alternative to Adobe, for the usual reasons, expensive subscription and lock-in.. I discovered DxO and feel that while it lacks some of the functionality, it is fundamentally a better RAW processor. (As is Capture One).
However DxO don’t do layers as such so HDR and Focus Stacking, two techniques I use frequently are only possible in Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Add to this the recent improvement to masks in Lightroom and Adobe suddenly start to look more attractive. Layer-based image processing is, in my opinion the most flexible and sensible way to process images. Photoshop excels at this and consequently has the largest market share. Adobe Lightroom is by far the best library management software on the market.
Adobe Workflow
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop
Lumenzia is a Photoshop panel by Greg Benz that creates luminosity masks and contains several very useful shortcuts built around that capability. It’s the best panel I’ve used and the only one I’ve kept. The reason it works better for me is that it mirrors very closely the way that I work with my photographs so I don’t have to adjust my workflow.
DxO still have some compelling reasons to keep me interested. Pure RAW is the best noise removal software I’ve used to date, Viewpoint beats Lightroom for perspective adjustment hands down. Filmpack 6 I use rarely but it is very impressive and from the Nik Collection, Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro are well worth the investment.
DxO Workflow
DXO Viewpoint 3
DXO Filmpack 6
A few words about the Nik Collection. I use Silver Efex Pro for black and white conversion. I’ve been using it for ever and haven’t seen anything remotely as good from other vendors. I use Color Efex Pro largely for web and social media images, to get a little extra ‘pop’.
Hands down the best panorama stitching software. I used this exclusively for 360° Panoramas and more often than not for Gigapixel panoramas.
Pano2VR, like KRPano renders a panorama in an html 5 wrapper. This is beneficial to serving over the internet as it breaks the huge panorama file up into hundreds of ’tiles’ that are quick to download and can be reassembled in the browser. If this sounds slow, it isn’t. Read my Ultimate Guide on setting up Hosting for Gigapixel Panoramas.
Also uses an HTML 5 wrapper and is, on balance, a little more user-friendly than Pano2VR. Contains some very useful tools, such as the ability to embed video onto a screen within the panorama.
Digital Storage
I spent fourteen years as an IT consultant so I’m very picky about storage. We used to have a saying that a document doesn’t exist unless there is more than one copy. The same can be said of pictures. Basically the CF or Micro SD cards in the camera have to be backed up. If I’m on a trip I’ll use a Sandisk Extreme 1 Tb portable SSD drive and copy the cards to it every night. Back at base, I use G-Technology G-DRIVE ev RaW 1 Tb drives to edit on. I have quite a few of these now and I think they have been sunset so I won’t provide a link. When I can’t get any more, I’ll use the Sandisk drives instead.
Once edited, I discard everything except the keepers and archive the session on a Synology RAID drive. This in its turn is automatically synched to Backblaze cloud storage.
Mobile Apps
There are an abundance of photo related apps with more arriving daily and others falling by the wayside. Listing them seems like a futile exercise as the list would be out of date by the time I finished it. So I’ve arrived at a core set that have provided actual value to me for more than a year in various ways. These links are all iOS, but most are available for Android too.
Planning
The Photographer’s Ephemeris and Photo Pills. two apps that are indispensable for landscape photography planning. I’ver recently discovered an app called Artist’s Viewfinder that is genius. It emulates the field of view for any camera/lens combo you dial in and is something I find myself using more and more to plan compositions when I’m scouting a location. Also worth looking at What3Words – an app that allows you to pinpoint any 3 metre square on the planet. Meteo Blue is my favourite weather app.
Shooting
Pocket Light Meter, Lee Stopper App (App Store), the exposure calculator for the Lee Stopper ND Filters. Sky Guide (App Store) – a remarkable app that lets you see in real time, what stars are available relative to your position, and time. Invaluable for night sky photography in locating the North Star for example, but also because you can set the time and look ahead which makes it excellent for planning too.
Processing
The most futile list of all! The only app I use for processing on the phone is Snapseed. The app I use to shoot on the phone is ProCamera which generates RAW files that can take a bit more processing.