Tripods

I like getting UP, in general, for landscape compositions.

  This has rapidly become a lost art: using a tripod to actually set your composition mechanically.  I've got a set of old Gitzo carbon fiber legs and several heads, though the one that lives on the tripod is a number 3 heavy metal job that weighs nearly as much as the rest of the rig.  It can handle the 5X7 and the 8X10.

Setting your composition with a ground glass or viewfinder manually and having to lock it down through image after image makes you watch the framing very carefully.  Nobody wanted to give up film any more than they want to give up pixels.

  Digital, evolving ever faster, smaller and lighter, plus the high ISOs makes tripods seem like the relic they probably are.  Folks won't miss what they never experienced.