ESSENTIAL ACCESSORIES OF THE PROS
It’s not just your camera and lenses that make up the essentials of your kit; capturing great shots often requires additional accessories to help you on your way. We speak to six professional photographers who rely on a range of additional items, some photo-related and some not, but they are key to helping them to capture successful images
Landscapes
Justin is an award-winning professionnal landscape photographer from Suffolk. He runs workshops in the UK and around the world. See www.justinminns.co.uk, Facebook @justinminnsphoto and Instagram @justinminns
Geared head
Composition, in my opinion, is the most important aspect of landscape photography, so for those of us who use a tripod, the right tripod head is crucial. Ball heads are quick and easy to use but geared heads, which are adjusted by turning three knobs (one for each axis) although slower in use (and often heavier), are ideal for landscapes as they are precise as well as accurate.
I use the Arca Swiss P0 Hybrid head which is a combination of the two. It has a ball head for quickly composing the image and two geared adjustments for fine-tuning the composition and levelling the horizon.
The panoramic adjustment is at the top so once the camera is levelled, panoramas are a doddle with no need to fiddle around levelling the tripod itself. Arca Swiss are notoriously expensive but there are plenty of excellent, more reasonably priced geared heads available, such as those made by Benro and Manfrotto.
L-bracket
I love shooting landscapes in both landscape and portrait orientation but with most tripod heads, flipping the camera into vertical orientation moves the camera to the side, altering the composition and shifting the centre of gravity away from its stable position above the tripod legs.
The answer is an L-bracket. I use the Smallrig L-bracket with my Canon EOS R5. As the name suggests, an L-bracket fits around the camera in an L shape, with a tripod plate on both the underneath and the side of the camera, allowing you to quickly change from shooting in landscape orientation to portrait by taking the camera off the tripod and remounting it using the tripod plate on the side.
An additional benefit of an L-bracket is that its shape and fit prevents the tripod plate from slipping which can happen with conventional plates. When choosing an L-bracket, try to get one made specifically for your camera model as it will allow access to all the camera’s sockets and buttons.
Clothing
Keeping yourself warm, dry and comfortable is such an important part of enjoying landscape photography that I had to include an item of outdoor gear in this list. Choosing which one was the hard part. I spend
