Must-Have Landscape Photography Equipment

The great thing about landscape photography is that you don't need a lot of gear, gizmos and gadgets. All you need is a camera and a wide-angle zoom lens and you can go out and take great landscape photos. But if someone were to put a gun to my head and say, "Pick three accessories that you absolutely think are critical for landscape photography." Here's what I'd pick. First of all, a sturdy yet lightweight tripod. This is absolutely critical for really good landscape photography. Sure, you can go out there and hand hold shots but it's not gonna limit what you can do. The best landscape photos are taken at the edge of light, sunrise, sunset, during twilight when the light is low. So often, you're using very long exposures. Also, you need a lot of depth of field when you're taking landscape photography. So you're using small apertures like F11 or F16 to make sure you have that really great near far focus and that's gonna make your exposures longer. So really nice tripod is gonna help you get those great landscape shots when you're working in low light and when you need a lot of depth of fields. Also, it'll ensure critical sharpness in all of your landscape shots. So I use a carbon fiber tripod. My current model is a Gitzo. And this Gitzo is tall enough to reach eye level if I need it or even a little bit higher that way if I'm working on uneven terrain I can set up the tripod at a level that's gonna be high enough so I can work comfortably with it. Also, it'll go down to ground level if I need it. If I bring the legs in and then I bring the legs out I can actually get this tripod down to pretty near ground level. And that allows for really low angle shots if I need it. So a good sturdy tripod, absolutely critical. Tripod I have here is made out of carbon fiber and that keeps the tripod lightweight and it's very sturdy. So it's great when I have to get out in the field and do a little hiking or backpacking to reach a good landscape location. The second critical accessory is a remote trigger. An electronic switch that plugs into the camera right here. And this allows me to trigger the shutter without actually touching the shutter button. And this does one or two things. One, it allows me to trigger the shutter without causing any vibrations on the camera and this is really critical when I'm trying to eke out every last bit of sharpness in my landscape photos. Two, it allows me to back away a little bit from the camera and trigger the shutter from a distance which might be useful if I'm working near water. If a wave comes in and I don't wanna get my feet wet, I can step back and trigger the shutter at the right moment. Now, you can see with my remote trigger I've tied these little knots in it and I do that so I can hang the remote from the tripod that way if I'm working, for example, in deep water, I don't wanna get the remote to get wet if a wave comes in and it's hanging down here I can hang it right here and that keeps the remote high and dry. The last accessory that I think is really critical for my landscape work is an L-bracket, which is basically an L-shaped bracket that goes on your camera. And the reason why I find this useful is it allows me to switch from landscape to portrait format really easily. Now, if you don't have an L-bracket, the way you're set up to switch over to the vertical format you need to drop your ball head like so and that basically unbalances your whole setup. It's a lot more difficult to get in position. With the L-bracket, I can just very easily switch between the two keeping my setup as stable as possible, keeping the center of gravity over the middle of the tripod. So that gives me a much more stable setup overall. So these are the three most important accessories to my landscape work.