There’s a question every photographer gets asked eventually, right after “What camera should I buy?” – it’s “What gear do you use?”

My setup is a hybrid of old and new, digital and analog, high-spec and humble. So, I figured it’s time to lay it all out on the table.

Welcome to my complete gear list. Whether you’re a spec-obsessed gear head or a curious beginner wondering if you really need that new mirrorless body, I hope this helps. Spoiler: you don’t.

Cameras: The Three Faces of My Photography

I don’t believe in a single “best” camera. I believe in the right tool for the right mood.

1. Canon EOS 6D Mark II (My Digital Workhorse)

This is what I reach for 80% of the time. The 6D II gets criticised by pixel-peepers for its dynamic range, but in the real world? It’s a tank. The 26.2MP full-frame sensor gives me that buttery background separation I love, and the vari-angle touchscreen is a lifesaver when I’m contorted on the forest floor of New Zealand.

Geek note: The Dual Pixel AF in live view is old now, but still more reliable than my own eyes at twilight. I shoot this exclusively in RAW – which leads me to Darktable later.

2. Canon EOS 700D (The Rebel Heart)

My first “real” camera. I keep it because it’s light and silent. It’s my walk-around camera when I don’t want to care about $2,000 of gear hanging off my neck. It's also the camera that produced every photo that achieved my LPSNZ. The 18MP APS-C sensor punches way above its weight if you feed it good light.

3. Pentax K-1000 (The Vintage Soul)

Ah, the mechanical masterpiece. No battery except for the light meter. No autofocus. No screen. Just a split-prism viewfinder, a cloth shutter, and the sound of a mirror slap that feels like a reloading rifle.

I shoot Ilford HP5 or Kodak Portra 400 through this when I need to slow down. You can’t chimp (check the LCD) on a K-1000. You just breathe, meter, focus, and commit. You can't beat a film camera for forcing you to slow down, breathe, and make sure you've got the shot.

Lenses (The Actual Magic)

Full disclosure: I’m going to update this list later because I genuinely can’t recall every focal length off the top of my head. But the core ones are:

[Here’s where you’ll add your lenses. Example format:]

• *Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM (The nifty fifty – cheap, sharp, beloved)*
• *Canon 24-105mm f/4L (My event zoom)*
• *Some vintage M42 screw-mount lens adapted to the Pentax*
• [Add your others when you remember them]

Computer Hardware: The Digital Darkroom

Raw files are like film negatives – useless without development. Here’s where I do that dirty work.

• CPU: Intel 8th Gen i7 (6 cores, 6 threads) – It’s not the latest, but for batch processing in Darktable? It’s a quiet storm.
• RAM: 32GB DDR4. This is the unsung hero. Darktable’s memory usage spikes when you use parametric masks, and 32GB means I never hear swap file thrashing.
• Primary Drive: 256GB NVMe (OS and apps only). Fast, but tiny. I install nothing extra here.
• Storage: Multiple external drives (Mix of 7200rpm HDDs and a cheap SATA SSD for a working cache). One drive for RAW originals, one for exports, and a third for backup. Geek confession: I don’t use RAID. I use “sneaker net” manual copies. Don’t @ me.

For the non-geek: My computer isn’t new or shiny, but I fed it more RAM (working memory) than a gaming PC. That’s the secret.

Software: Open Source, No Apologies

Darktable (instead of Lightroom)

Yes, I know Lightroom is the “standard.” But I refuse to pay a subscription to edit my own photos. Darktable is insanely powerful – it just doesn’t hold your hand. I use the filmic RGB module for every single edit. It’s my digital fixer.

Geek detail: The parametric masks in DT are more logical than Lightroom’s range mask.

OpenShot (Video Editing)

I’m not a videographer. But sometimes I need to splice a BTS clip or timelapse. OpenShot is to Premiere what a spork is to a chef’s knife – it does the job, it’s free, and it crashes less than you’d expect on Linux (yes, I also dual-boot Ubuntu, but that’s a blog post for another day).

Final Takeaway: Gear is Just Vocabulary

You can write a boring sentence with a $10,000 Leica, or a beautiful one with a disposable camera. This list isn’t meant to impress you – it’s meant to show you what one photographer actually uses to make art.

Cheers,
Martyn
Digital Art Kiwi