Tools & Tips

Tripods

Digital Cameras & Lenses

1. Phase One XT & IQ4.150 Digital Back. My first Phase was the DLSR XF with a Trichromatic back. I took that back swimming in the Pacific Ocean on Maui's north shore with a Cambo technical body. It did not survive. [Phase had a new one in my hands in 48 hours.]

2. Leica M11. The Leica M11 gets crapped on a lot out in the forums, and I suppose it's earned some of that with its price point. But I love mine. When it took a bath off the Oregon coast in 2023, and gradually failed thereafter, I sent it off for repair, and it came back good as new, free of charge, and in less than 6 weeks. It looked even better than before, and were it not for the serial number, I would have sworn it was a brand new camera. The ergonomics are superb, the menu system reasonably intuitive—better than Sony or Nikon, but not as good as either Phase Or Hasselblad, both of which are in a league of their own—

3. Sony A7CR. For work where I need to carry a zoom, and autofocus is a real asset, especially with IBIS and/or OIS, I've settled on the Sony A7CR. It sports a BSI sensor nearly identical to the one in the Leica M11. It's got plenty of disadvantages if that's what you want to focus on—e.g., single card slot, lower-res EVF—but for a camera almost the same size and weight as a Leica, it's pretty impressive. And the video functions are excellent as well, if you're into moving pictures. Ive been through the full evolution of Nikon digital cameras—the 90, 800, 810, 810A, 850, Z7—and I love Nikon ergonomics; for full-frame, full-size digital cameras, I think they are the best. And I wanted to love their entry into mirrorless, but Sony was just too far ahead, and it wasn't clear Nikon would survive that race, so I made the switch. Since then, Nikon have caught up, and they are doing it superbly. Their latest cameras are excellent; but they've got nothing quite like the A7CR. And even if they did, at this point, I am not sure I'd switch back. At this level of sensor technology, and the ability to make wall-size prints, there isn't much point in switching.

5. Leica CL. Mary has an excellent Leica CL kit that includes two zooms. It makes beautiful images straight out of the camera. Lightweight, and easy to carry around, it is an ideal

6. The Sony DSC-RX10mkIV. Maybe the best digital camera ever made, and it's a crime that Sony discontinued it, so now it's only available in the used market. Consider what that tells you that a discontinued digital camera sells for $1000 more used than it did new. And it was new in 2017. That's a decade of obsolescence right there. And yet . . . if you can get one, you should. I've written about it before here and here. I took this camera to Namibia, when I thought I would be doing mostly landscape work, and ended up with the chance to shoot a lot of wildlife. It was a lifesaver. If you can only have one camera, and you need to travel compactly—it's not super lightweight, because it is so well made—this is the one.

UPDATE! That right there, that's old news. Sony has just released [August 2026] a brand spankin' new DSC-RX10mkV [who names these things?], and you can get it now. But here's the rub. It's badsically using the same sensor as the IV, paired with better software, microprocessor, and battery capacity, plus improved ergonomics. In all other respects, the glass and sensor are the same. Obsolete? Hardly. Still the best all-around digital camera ever made, and interestingly, the new one costs about $1k more than the old one. Sony must have been watching fleabay.

Film Cameras & Lenses

1. Arca-Swiss Field Metric 8x10

2. Arca-Swiss Field Metric 4x5

3. Leica M6 & Bessa R3. In the film rangefinder category, these are what we like.

Accessories

1. Kase Magnetic Filter.

2. Expose 5000 Backpacks. Backpacks we like a lot: f.64, Shimoda, f-stop.

We find these software examples useful. You might, too.

1. Photrus. Number one on our list of tools that help us create our artwork is https://www.photrus.com/ As I said in my review of Photrus, this may be the biggest no-brainer in all of landscape photography. I love TPE [more below] and pay for but just tolerate PhotoPils [don't be a hater]. But there is nothing else like Photrus. What Christian Irmler has built is unavailable anywhere else. You might be able to cobble together all the data necessary from other sources to produce what Photrus generates effortlessly [for you], but you would spend hours, if not days, trying to do so. Even if you employed OpenAI or Claude or Perplexity, you would not have the rock-solid reliability that Photrus offers.

2.. TPE. I don't know anybody who calls it by its rightful name, The Photographer's Ephermeris. Everyone I know calls it TPE.

3. Location Scout. Along with ShotHotSpot, we find these tools invaluable for finding. Other blogs may tell you to check Instagram or OPujnterest—seriously?—but Location Scout and ShotHotSpot

3. Capture One. Some people love Lightroom—and I respect it begrudgingly, but I will not use it ever again, ever since it lured me into mistakenly deleting a boatload of original files from the Maldives and Bali; that was my doing, but trust me, LR lured me—and some swear by DxO PureRAW, and others will do anything to avoid paying a subscription fee for their image maintenance (I get it), but for me, it is Capture One. And as long as I am shooting a Phase One camera, it always will be. At one time, perhaps a little as 2-3 years ago (I am writing this in 2026), its color science was superior to every other RAW processor out there, primarily because it was built from early on to handle 16-bit files. But the competition has been catching up. I'm not so sure that, if you process a file out of a Leica, or Nikon, or Sony, or Canon, or Fuji, that you will perceive a dramatic rendition difference.

What is different is that only C1 can process the RAW files from a Phase One digital back correctly. And that's where the magic happens. What's wonderful about those images is 16 bits and the Phase color science. The only thing that comes close is a Hasselblad, and it's not close enough [see below]. And while C1 may not be a full-blown pixel editor the way Photoshop is, but you can actually achieve 50% or more of your desired edits with its tools, and all those edits occur in a non-destructive RAW space. For some people, there may be no need to employ Photoshop.

Conversely, one significant downside to C1 is that, if you shoot a Hasselblad digital camera, C1 will not process those files. These two companies have been doing at each other like high school teenagers for years. And it's a shame. If you do shoot a Hasselblad 9we don't anymore, but might again), and you want to use C1, get yourself a batch EXIF editor. All you have to do is change a couple of letters in the EXIF files, and C1 will open DNG files made by Hasselblad.

4. Photoshop. I used to loath working in Photoshop, and that was only because of its complexity and depth. It intimidated me, and I suppose it still does. But there really is nothing else that can compete with its capabilities. There are in fact other software offerings that can do a lot of Photoshop does, and there are several that offer more attractive pricing. I know there is an entire segment of the photographic community dedicated to hating on Adobe's subscription plans, and I get it.

5.. Boris FX Optics. This is a new addition to our toolkit. I had known about Boris FX for several years—there are lots of other tools on their platform but Optics is the one for still photographers—ever since a webinar with the French photographic-artist David Duschens. But I was initially turned off by the kludgy platform and candidly, the price.

6. Luminar Neo. Skylum is the company that develops and markets Luminar Neo. This pixel-editor has been through a lot of twists and turns over the years. But it has eventually evolved into something quite useful. Its creative editing tools are quite good, and even if you used it as nothing more than a "trial balloon floater," it would be worth the price. But, you really have to be aware of its limitations. Even in this day and age of everyone slapping "AI" on their toolkit, Luminar Neo comes up short in a few respects that can affect your work, depending on how you use it. For me, the most significant downside of Luminar is its masking. Its masking tools are just not very good. They're not accurate, and they're not precise, and the masks they do create are difficult to edit. In their efforts to simplify masking and editing tools, I think they went a step or two too far. Another disadvantage is that Luminar cannot handle images that exceed a certain size. I believe that size is 15000px on any edge. Working with stitched panoramas in C1, it is not uncommon to exceed that limitation, and when you do, Luminar Neo simply refuses to load as a Photoshop plug-in with no explanation.

Also see our Tips & Articles Blog for additional insights on everything from imaging to hanging a print in your home or office.

This page will definitely be a work in progress, but every time we hit the road, we learn something new about the advantages of what we chose. Or its shortcomings.

1. Keeping It Light Enough For Ryan Air & The Air New Zealand Luggage Zealots in Queenstown. Some of the carry-on limits for airlines outside the USA are incredibly restrictive. 7 kilos, and I've had that enforced in biz and first as well. The purported safety reasons are preposterous, but they are what they are, and if you attempt to defy them, you do so at your peril. So, what do you do, especially if you are on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa, or New Zealand, or Iceland, or Bali and hauling that monster 800mm lens?

2. If you've got to check something. Cut the amount of clothes in your carry-on down to a set of underwear. In the colder months, wear your heaviest layers on to the plane, so they're not taking up room and weight allowance in either your carry-on or checked luggage.

Although most luggage—the vast majority, gets where it's supposed to go—remember it is likely to get opened up by people who "admire" your gear. So, try not to place any camera equipment of value in your checked baggage. Anything more valuable than a tripod is, not surprisingly, asking for disappointment.

But if you have no choice but to check camera gear, don't try to disguise it and don't skimp on the container. Put it in a piece of luggage designed to protect it like a Pelican. Skip the nuclear orange and lime color combo I once had and go with some version of gray or black. I had a theory that no one would try to make off with something so obvious, and I may have been right. But it also got my pulled over for extended inspection every single time [domestic TSA and foreign equivalents are not rocket scientists; they apparently think that bad guys advertise what they are doing]. Before you check your luggage, open it up at the airport and photograph the contents; that way, you will have a time-stamped photo of your ownership. Also, make sure you have receipts for your equipment with you. If those are not available, take individual time-stamped photos of each piece of equipment you own or rent, preferably at least a week before travel, and print them out to have with you. This will help deal with aggressive customs officers.

3. Make sure to insure your equipment. This is such a no-brainer, but it bears repeating. Don't just insure yourself and your trip; insure the equipment. I use insuremyequipment.com, and I also get free coverage through my membership with NANPA. There are plenty of option, and it's not expensive. I went swimming with my equipmentonce and learned this lesson the hard way. Don't make that mistake.

4. Traveling by car. Now you're cooking with gas. So to speak. You've got almost unlimited capacity to carry whatever you want. That is, until you have to put it on your back and carry it somewhere. Think it through. The car or van or whatever is great for making sure you've got a closetful of gear and accessories and every "what if" lens you could imagine. But all that equipment can cause far more problems than it solves. There is nothing like arriving at a brand new place, feeling overwhelmed by its awesomeness, and getting paralyzed by the breadth of your equipment and being unable to visualize your image.