CAMERAS AND LENSES

 

I currently utilize two separate camera systems.

 

For most of my landscape work, I use "old school" Mamiya RZ 67 Pro II bodies with the full complement of Mamiya RZ lenses ranging from the wide angle 50mm ULD (roughly equivalent to a 24mm lens on a full frame DSLR) to the impressive 500mm f6 APO telephoto (not many of these around). Having transitioned from Fuji medium format film several years ago, I now shoot a Phase One P65+ digital back (61 megapixels) on my Mamiya bodies.  While this system is fully manual, and extremely time consuming to set up for a shot, the images produced are incredible when all steps are executed properly.  I utilize Phase One's proprietary raw conversion program Capture One for my initial processing of the raw captures.

 

For my wildlife work (and some landscapes), I use Canon EOS-1D Mark III and EOS-1Dx bodies. Canon 24-105mm f4 IS, Zeiss 35 f1.4 and Zeiss 50mm  f1.2 are my primary landscape lenses, while Canon's 600mm f4 IS, 400mm f4 IS DO, 200mm f2 and 70-200 f2.8 are my primary wildlife and sports lenses.

 

ACCESSORIES

 

I utilize Gitzo tripods exclusively.  I invested in several of these incredible tripods over the years, and have never regretted the investment.  Gitzo tripods fit the old advice of "buy quality to start with, and only have to buy it once!"  My oldest Gitzo is almost 20 years old, and operates as well as it did on day one.

I use many of the fine products manufactured by Kirk Enterprises and Really Right Stuff for camera and lens support.  The products from Kirk and RRS are of exceptional quality and well worth the money.
  I still use my original Kirk Cobra gimbal head for my long telephoto lenses.  Like my Gitzo tripod, this head is approaching two decades of use, and still works flawlessly.  Simple design, and overbuilt in terms of quality.  This head handles a big 600 f4 lens with no problems.

I use an Arca Swiss monoball Z1 head for my heavy Mamiya system.  The Z1 is by far the best traditional style tripod head I have ever used.  Very easy to adjust, with an absolute minimum amount of "creep" when locking down.  The best part is that this head, although not overly large in size, will hold any system you can throw at it.  Again, not cheap but worth every penny!  With a system like the Mamiya RZ 67 and a 61 megapixel digital back, I need the heaviest, strongest, most stable platform I can get.  No electronic image stabilization here - only the laws of physics!