Suggested Equipment For Landscape Photography

Taking great landscape photos involves both skill and the right kind of equipment, such as a tripod with good leveling control. Though any type of handheld camera can take a landscape photo, having good equipment makes the difference between a decent photo and a fantastic photo. If you want to take eye-popping landscape photos or panoramas, then here are a few equipment suggestions to help you out.

Camera:

You can take good landscape photos using everything from a smartphone to an expensive large-format DSLR. For most people, a mid-range DSLR or point-and-shoot camera is good enough to get a great landscape photo. Make sure your camera has fully-manual settings. For the best results, you should be able to adjust the aperture, shutter speed and ISO, especially if you're doing panoramic and your camera doesn't have a panoramic setting. Though you can take good-quality photos with automatic settings, manual settings let you be more creative, though they may take some practice to get them just right.

Lenses:

While long lenses are great for photographing things that you can't get close to, such as wildlife, shorter, wide-angle lenses are better for landscapes. Long lenses narrow the field of view which means you get less of the landscape into the frame while smaller lenses do the opposite. Try to get lenses between 20mm and 50mm in focal length either fixed or zoom. Any smaller than 20mm and you may get some distortion, though some photographers like the effects of these ultra wide-angle lenses. Also, try to get a lens that allows for a narrow aperture.

Tripods:

For panoramas and wide-angle landscape photos, it's important to have the right tripod, especially if you're photographing urban scenes with its lines and angles. Leveling tripods makes it easier keep your camera at the right angle so your landscapes won't be askew and need editing. You can set it up and level it quickly without the hassles of adjusting the legs to keep things level. This makes it great for when you don't have a lot of time and need to shoot multiple locations. It also makes sure your camera stays stable so you can take multiple photos of the same location which need to be stitched together.

With the right equipment and some practice, you can create the type of landscape photos you want with little effort. While the camera and lenses account for a lot when it comes to these types of photographs, a good tripod is imperative to getting the clearest, most aligned and level photographs. If you are in the market for a good camera leveling tripod, talk with a photography retailer or a companies like Acratech to see what they can offer.

Share