What 10 things you need for landscape photography

Landscape photography is a very interesting and exciting genre.

It doesn’t require too much equipment compared to other photography styles (food photography, portrait photography, product photography - a lot of props, lights, light modifiers …)

You can do quite a lot with a “basic” equipment. These are the 10 things you might need to get that perfect shot.

1. Camera

Who would thought :) DSLR, mirrorless or medium format, it doesn’t matter which system you have, the main thing is to have a system with interchangeable lenses. Even though you can do a great shots with point and shoot cameras, this blog is focused on more advanced systems.

Before taking your camera for a trip think about your situation in more details: Do I hike a lot? Do I carry in backpack camping gear as well? How much weight can I manage to carry for a long time? Size and weight is always an important element.

Big, bulky and heavy cameras could take too much space in your backpack, small and lightweight cameras (mirrorless system these days) could be the answer for saving space and weight but not to forget that the battery life is shorter compared to DSLR batteries.

• Mirrorless system: small & light, short battery life

• DSLR: big, bulky & heavy, good battery life

• Medium format: big, bulky & heavy, good battery life

It’s your trip, your back, your weight you will carry for a day - make sure you pack only what’s necessary.

2. Batteries

This is an easy one. Buy a spare battery as you never know when the one in your camera will last during a trip.

3. Memory cards

No memory card - no images. I preferred several cards with smaller capacity (16GB - 32GB) than one high capacity card (64GB-256GB). Again, you don’t know when the memory card will decide it’s a not a good time to work. It’s like the saying: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I never had a problem with SanDisk Extreme PRO memory cards.

4. Lenses

Wide angle lens is usually the go to lens for landscape photography but with longer telephoto lens you can get more intimate results. I personally carry a wide angle lens 21mm f2.8 and longer lens 100mm f2.8. Next addition will be 180mm or 200mm as I used these focal lengths quite often.

Good choice is to go for a wide angle zoom lens (16-35mm, 16-40mm) telephoto zoom lens (70-200mm).

• Zoom lenses: bigger, bulkier, heavier and worse optical quality compared to prime lenses

• Prime lenses: lighter, outstanding optical performance but you got stuck at one focal length

AF lenses (Auto Focus) are bigger and heavier compared to MF (Manual Focus) lenses. AF focus works great in majority of situations, MF focus requires better skill to focus properly.

5. Tripod

For landscape photography you’ll be usually using aperture f8-11 and ISO100 for best sharpness and low noise which means the shutter speed is bit slow for handheld photo shooting. You can find huge range of tripods on the market from cheap to very expensive ones, made of aluminium, steel of carbon fibres, lightweight or heavy, with different height and different types of tripod leg mounts. The endless options to choose from.

Which one is the right for you? Take a trip to your local photo store, and try few models yourself. The tripod for you is good compromise between price, weight, height, max load and available accessories.

6. Tripod Head

3 way or ball head? RC2 or Arca Swiss?

Tripod heads come in various shapes, materials and types of quick release plates.

For years I was using Manfrotto 804 RC2 - 3 way tripod head which is bit heavy and bulky, on the other side this head is very well build and getting camera in level is very easy. To drop down the weight I started using small ball head with Arca Swiss quick release plate. The reason I went from RC2 to Arca Swiss is because I got a L-plate for Sony a7RII - more about the L-plate is in bullet point 5.

Again, best to find a best choice for you, go in photo store and try it yourself.

• 3 way head: precise position control thanks to 2 arms, no need to hold the camera. One arm controls the X-axis and the other controls the Y-axis. 3rd way is rotation of head around.

• Ball head: you need to hold the camera, loosen the ball head and put the camera in position, than tighten the ball head to secure the position. When ball head is loosen, you can move the camera in any direction and rotate it as well simultaneously.

7. L-Plate

What is L-plate? It’s a plate in L shape :) Easy as that.

The L-plate is designed to make your life easier when shooting in portrait/vertical mode on tripod. Without the L-plate you have to tilt the 3 way head to 90 degrees position to be able to shoot in portrait mode (same with ball head) and this can cause the following: 1. centre of gravity is off balance, camera with tripod can easily fell over. 2. When shooting panorama the nadal point (no-paralax point) is off balance and stitching images together takes more time 3. Camera can rotate on quick release plate under its own weight (your camera & lens are attached to quick release with a small screw and the weight could be too on this little guy and camera starts to slowly going down towards ground)

Benefits of L-plate:

• Extra protection for your camera

• Easy to switch from landscape to portrait mode

• Camera always in centre of gravity

• Faster composition in portrait mode

I’m currently using 3 legged thing L-plate for Sony a7RII camera and I couldn’t be happier. One of the best accessories I purchased over the years.

8. Cable release / remote shutter release

Long exposures over 30s (in BULB mode) or just to eliminate camera shake, the cable release is a cheap and perfect accessory for your landscape photography.

Even though you have camera on tripod, when you press the camera shutter button, this action can cause a camera shake and the photograph will be bit blurry. You can avoid the camera shake with self-timer of 5 or 10 seconds but for the exposures over 30s you need to have a cable release. Regular cable releases cost roughly £10.

More expensive solution is Remote shutter release which fire the camera via wireless signal. Many remote shutter releases these days support simple single shooting, 15 continuous shooting, [ BULB ] shooting, delay shooting and timer schedule shooting.

I still have a cheap cable release for Nikon D800 and for its price of £12, still works like a charm. I’m planning to use this remote shutter release for Sony camera as it has all the functions I need.

9. Filters

Screw on or slide in, these are the main systems available for your lens.

Why do I need filters? If your workflow is based on multiple exposures and stitching images in pc, you can skip this paragraph :)

If you want to get best results on location and save time with post process, keep reading.

I personally prefer using slide in filters (Lee Filter system). My favourite filters are Big Stopper, circular polariser, ND Grad soft and ND Grad Hard. This combination of filters helps me to cover probably 95% of situations.

Big Stopper: drops down the exposure by 10 stops. If the exposure is 1s, the exposure with big stopper is 16 minutes! Perfect choice for long exposure in your landscape photographs.

• Circular Polariser: filters out the polarized component of light from the sky increasing contrast with the clouds. That’s how you get that rich dark blue sky (if you use the filter in correct angle with sun). This filter also eliminates the unwanted reflections (water, wet rocks..)

• ND Grad Soft & Hard filters: helps you to darken a part of an image, usually used to darken the sky and get the dynamic range of the scene within the dynamic range of your camera. Grad filters are available in soft or hard gradient. Soft is for uneven horizon, hard grad is for straight horizon. You can use multiple combinations of filter as far your filter holder allows.

• Screw-on filters: for different lens diameters you need separate screw-in filter or step-up/down ring which helps you to screw on one filter on different filter diameter.

10. Backpack

Should be comfortable, good protection for equipment and with an easy access to your gear.

My main problem with backpacks is that if I don’t have a camera by my side or easily accessible I tend not to use the camera as often as I should. I missed many great shots because the camera was in backpack and I was too lazy to take it off, pull my camera out and take the shot.My last configuration is shoulder bag and hiking backpack. In hiking backpack I have food, water, clothes - “permanently” stripped to my body and shoulder back by my side with camera and lenses. This setup might be weird for some people but it works for me :)