The problem learning from a professional photographer like Don, is that one's kit tends to be 'professional' (with prices to match).
Camera:
My current camera is a Canon 5D MkII DSLR.
It has a 21 megapixel CMOS full sized (35mm) sensor, and most useful its water resistant.
With such an important (and expensive) purchase I didn’t rely on the Internet, but went to a specialist camera shop. So that if things went wrong one hopes one would get good service.
Luckily even though I dropped the camera (ouch) onto a carpet floor once, it survived as the 5D MkII has a metal body.
Lenses:
The camera came with a kit 24-105mm f4 ‘L’ professional zoom lens.
This is my general lens for most things as it has auto-focus and image stabilisation.
Occasionally for landscape photography, I also use a wide-angle 16-35mm f2.8 II ‘L’ lens.
This has auto-focus but no image stabilisation. The latter is not really a problem as all landscape photography should be performed using a tripod.
Finally for distance work, I use a 100–400mm f/4.5–5.6 ‘L’ telephoto lens. This is quite an old lens now and has been superseded.
As with all expensive lenses, it's imperative to install a UV filter onto the front. These are not too expensive, but are a whole lot cheaper than replacing an expensive lens if the glass gets scratched.
Tripod:
My tripod is a Manfrotto 190 CF three section carbon-fibre tripod. Although expensive I was concerned about the weight of a normal aluminium one. Although not much more it does become noticeable when one has been lugging this around all day.
I went for a three section over the four section version, as it was more stable but the downside is that is has difficulty in fitting an aircraft-sized suitcase.
Filters:
I currently have:
- 0.6 Neutral Density Hard Grad filter (reduces the exposure by 2 stops and is used to darken the sky in daytime landscape photography, as the sky is much brighter than the land).
- 0.6 ProGlass ND Standard filter (reduces exposure by 2 stops and is used in long exposure images with water in them to produce a milky effect).
- 105mm glass circular polariser (used to darken skies, manage reflections, or suppress glare from the surface of lakes or the sea).
Flash:
Although not essential, I also have a Canon 580EX Speedlite flash unit.
I originally purchased it for a wedding I was photographing.
As it ‘talks’ to the camera, the strength of the flash varies with the subject distance. It recharges very quickly and I have used it far more than I originally thought I would.
At one wedding I photographed in Cyprus a few years ago, it saved my bacon when photographing the bride & groom against a very bright sea & sky, when others with their point & shoot cameras just got silhouettes.
Editing Computer:
Last but not least, in 2013 I built my main 64bit PC consisting of:
- An Intel Core i7 4770K Quad Core processor (overclocked).
- Asus Z87-PRO motherboard.
- 16GB Kingston Technology XMP Beast Series 2400MHz DDR3 memory.
- 240GB Kingston Technology HyperX Solid State Drive (SSD).
- 4TB black Western Digital hard disk drive (HDD).
- Asus GeForce GTX 770 graphics card.
- More fans than I care to count.
I’ve more recently upgraded to a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD, as the Kingston was running out of space.