What Camera Gear do they use?

  Jeff Wall is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale, backlit photographic tableaux that blur the line between reality and fiction. A pioneer of the "staged photography" movement, Wall’s work is influenced by painting, cinema, and literature — often echoing the compositional grandeur of classical art but through the medium of contemporary photography. While many photographers capture moments that unfold before them, Jeff Wall builds his moments. His works are often the result of weeks or even months of planning, casting, lighting, and post-production — making his gear choices central to his ability to construct seamless, believable scenes with extraordinary detail. Camera Gear & Process Cameras Jeff Wall has used a variety of large- and medium-format film cameras , and more recently digital systems, including: Linhof Technika 4×5 view camera (in earlier works) Linhof Master Technika Classic Hasselblad medium format systems Phase One IQ digital bac...

  Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer and conceptual artist known for serene, minimalist black-and-white images that explore time, memory, and perception. Whether he’s photographing the sea horizon, empty movie theaters, or dioramas at natural history museums, Sugimoto’s work is technically immaculate and deeply philosophical. His gear is inseparable from his method — large-format cameras, long exposures, and a nearly obsessive control of the photographic process. Camera Gear & Technical Method Main Camera: Deardorff 8×10 View Camera Sugimoto’s primary camera is a Deardorff 8×10 large format field camera , a wooden-bodied bellows camera originally designed in the 1920s. It’s heavy, slow, and fully manual — but also supremely capable of producing images with exquisite detail and tonal range. Deardorf 8x10 He also sometimes uses an 11×14 large format camera for extremely high-resolution work. I like old cameras. You need to spend time. You can’t just press the shu...

  Helmut Newton (1920–2004) was a German-Australian photographer whose provocative, cinematic imagery—often erotic, stylized, and framed in urban or hotel settings—became iconic in fashion and portrait photography. His work appeared extensively in Vogue and Elle , and he was celebrated for images that blended scripted glamour with moments of candid surprise. Camera Gear & Toolkit An Equipped Minimalist Newton famously kept his kit small yet versatile: Four camera bodies , five lenses , a strobe, and a Polaroid camera—all fitting in one bag under 40 lbs . This minimalist setup enabled him to work anywhere with ease . Over his career, he experimented with a variety of systems including a 4×5 Graflex Super D , Rolleiflex TLR , Nikon , Canon , Pentax , Olympus , Instamatic , and even point‑and‑shoot compacts like the Stylus Epic —often choosing whichever tools suited the situation best . Graflex Super D Helmut Newton and camera He is seen on a number of pictures using a ...

  Franco Fontana (b. 1933, Modena) is celebrated as one of Italy’s most influential photographers, renowned for transforming ordinary landscapes into vibrant abstract compositions through bold color and minimal form. Vision & Visual Philosophy Fontana emerged during a time when fine art photography was still dominated by black and white. He embraced color early—once saying: Photography should not reproduce the visible; it should make the invisible visible. He often works from telephoto viewpoints , compressing terrain and flattening form to create chromatic bands of fields, sky, and architecture—shaping large-scale landscapes into abstract imagery. Camera Gear: Proven Choices for Saturated Colour Fontana’s equipment was practical yet powerful, enabling his signature visual style: 35 mm Canon film camera (Canon Eos 1) , paired with just three focal lengths: 17–35 mm zoom 35–300 mm zoom 14 mm prime for wide, abstract geometry These lenses helped him control p...

  Here’s a structured profile of Elliott Erwitt —focusing on his photographic vision, iconic work, and the cameras that helped him document life with wit and humanity: Elliott Erwitt: Master of Life’s Subtle Ironies — and the Cameras He Trusted Elliott Erwitt (1928–2023) was a legendary Magnum photographer celebrated for capturing candid moments full of humor, compassion, and uncanny visual wit. His images—whether of dogs, famous personalities, or everyday urban vignettes—convey candid truth through simplicity and timing. Visual Style & Biography Born in Paris to Russian émigrés and raised in Italy and the U.S., Erwitt developed an early sensitivity to cultural nuance and irony. After studying photography and filmmaking, he joined Magnum Photos in 1953 and went on to produce iconic images of children, dogs, world leaders, celebrities, and intrusions of absurdity into daily life . His signature lies in the surprising conjunction: a pair of boots beside a tiny dog, a couple ki...

  Ako Salemi is an Iranian-born photojournalist and street photographer, now based in the U.S. His poetic images of daily life in Tehran have won international attention, showing city streets under cinematic light and human stories unfolding amid architectural geometry. A Visual Voice Formed by Light and Silence Born in Bukan, Kurdistan, in 1981, Salemi initially studied drama before discovering that photography—especially street photography—matched his introspective nature better. He worked for years as a photojournalist in Iran before turning to a more expressive, poetic style rooted in his love of classic cinema and visual tension . Since about 2014, he has become known on Instagram as @f64s125 , posting visual stories of Tehran shaped by striking light and shadow, formal alignment, and everyday poetry. Gear: The Mobile Camera That Lets Him Blend In Ako Salemi shoots almost exclusively with a smartphone , embracing its speed and stealth for street photography: He began by...

  Nick Hannes (b. 1974, Antwerp; lives in Ranst, Belgium) is a celebrated documentary photographer and educator. With a background in photojournalism, he shifted toward independent long-form photography—publishing acclaimed books like Red Journey , Mediterranean. The Continuity of Man , Garden of Delight , and New Capital . His work explores urbanization, migration, and globalization across six newly built capitals—astutely observing power, spectacle, and absurdity under the sun. Camera Gear: Precision, Discretion & Speed Nick’s long-term projects demand mobility, minimalism, and responsiveness. While most gear details remain private, credible interviews confirm: Primary Recent Work Cameras : Nikon D810 and Sony A7R III are the main tools he uses for documentary projects. Nikon D810 see it on Amazon Sony A7R III see it on Amazon Earlier Toolkit : During his traditional picture journalism era (e.g. covering local traditions), he reportedly used Nikon D3 and D3x bodie...

  Gustavo Minas , the Brazilian-born photographer based in Brasília and São Paulo, crafts visual essays in color that feel like living paintings—full of reflections, architectural geometry, people in motion, and sharp contrasts. Although his inner world is dense and cinematic, his camera gear has evolved with intention and clarity. Gear Journey: From Fuji X100 to X‑Pro3 Fujifilm X100 (2014–2016) Minas discovered Fujifilm in 2014 when his DSLR broke. He borrowed an X100 and immediately fell in love with its slide-film color aesthetic and compactness. He then transitioned to the X‑Pro1 with a 27 mm lens , giving him more compositional control and a 41 mm equivalent field of view, better suited to Brasília’s urban scale . Fujifilm X100 Fujifilm X‑Pro1 → X‑Pro2 In 2016, Minas upgraded to the X‑Pro1 + 27 mm and the versatile 18–55 mm zoom , which allowed him to work with layered reflections and unified depth, blending planes into visual metaphors .  Fujifilm X-Pro1 He moved to the...