Sometimes people email me to ask how I make luxagraf. Here's how I do it: I write, take pictures and combine them into stories. I recognize that this is not particularly helpful. Or it is, I think, but it's not why people email me. They want to know about at the tools I use. Which is fine. I guess. Consumerism! Yay! Anyway, I decided to make a page I can just point people to. There's no affiliate links and I'd really prefer it if you didn't buy any of this stuff because you don't need it. I don't need it. I could get by with less. I should get by with less. I am in fact always striving to need less and be less particular. Still, for better or worse. Here are the tools I use. ### Notebook and Pen My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I do have several notebooks though. One is in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. The other is larger and it's my sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. Then I have other notebooks for specific purposes, meditation journal, commonplace book, and so on. I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. I used to be very picky about pens, but then I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, clear black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use -- any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen. ### Camera This is what everyone wants to know about. I use a Sony A7ii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera that happens to make it easy to use legacy film lenses. I bought it specifically because it was the only full frame digital camera available that let me use the old lenses that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes, though the RAW files from the A7ii have wonderful dynamic range, which was the other selling point for me. One day when the A7Rii gets cheap enough I may pick one up because the dynamic range is even better. That said, none of the A7 series are cheap cameras. If you want to travel you'd be better off getting something cheaper and using your money to travel. The Sony a6000 is very nearly as good and costs much less. In fact, having tested dozens of cameras for Wired over the years I can say with some authority that the a6000 is the best value for money on the market period, but doubly so if you want at cheap way to test out some older lenses. ### Lenses All of my lenses are old and manual focus, which I prefer to autofocus lenses. I like the fact that they're cheap too, but really the main appeal for me with old lenses was the far superior focusing rings. I grew up using all manual focus cameras. Autofocus was probably around by the time I picked up a camera, but I never had it. My father had (still has) a screw mount Pentax. I bought a Minolta with money from a high school job. Eventually I upgraded to a Nikon F3 which was my primary camera until 2004. While there are advantages to autofocus, and certainly modern lenses are much sharper in most cases, neither autofocus nor perfect edge to edge sharpness are significant for the type of photos I like to make. One thing about shooting manual lenses is that there are a ton of cheap manual lenses out there. I have seen amazing photos produced with $10 lenses. Learn to manual focus a lens is like opening a door into a secret world. A secret world where lenses are cheap. The net result of my foray into this world is that I have a ridiculous collection of lenses. And we live in a bus, lord knows what I'd have if we had more space. That said, about 90% of the time I have one of two lenses on my A7: a minolta 50 f/2 or a minolta 55 f/1.7. I bought the first for $20, the second for $60. About 90 percent of the images on this site were taken with one of those lenses. At the wide end of the spectrum I have a Canon, the FD 20mm f2.8, and a Minolta 28 f/2.8 that I use in cities. For portraits I use the Minolta MD 100 f2. For animals and birds I have a Tokina 100-300mm f/4 which happens to be minolta mount so I use a Minolta 2X with it to make it a 200-600mm lens. It's pretty soft at the edges, but since I mostly use if for wildlife, which I tend to crop anyway, I get by. Among my other lenses is this crazy Russian fisheye thing I bought one night on eBay after I'd been drinking. It's pretty hilarious bad at anything less than f8, but it's useful for shooting in small spaces, like the inside of the bus. ### Laptop My laptop is a Lenovo x250 I bought off eBay for $300. I upgraded the hard drives and put in an HD screen, which brought the total outlay to $550, which is really way too much to spend on a computer these days, but my excuse is that I make money using it. Why this particular laptop? It's small and the battery lasts quite a while (like 15 hrs when I'm writing, more like 12 when editing photos, 15 minutes when editing video). It also has a removable battery and can be upgraded by the user. I packed in almost 3TB of disk storage, which is nice. It does make a high pitch whining noise that drives me crazy whenever I'm in a quiet room with it, but since I mostly use it outdoors, sitting around our camps, this is rarely an issue. Still, like I said, I could get by with less. I should get by with less. Old EeePCs are excellent bargains on eBay for instance. The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux, it could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have [written about elsewhere](/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux). I was also interviewed on the site [Linux Rig](https://linuxrig.com/2018/11/28/the-linux-setup-scott-gilbertson-writer/), which has some more details on how and why I use Linux. ### phone/tablet/drone/wrist tracking device thingy Yeah I don't have any of those. I'm one of those people. I pay for everything in cash too. Fucking weirdo is what I am. I told you you didn't want to know how I make stuff. But there you have it, my technology stack. I am of course always looking for ways to get by with less technology, but I think, after years of getting rid of stuff, I reached something close to ideal.