Latest Review
Okay. Confession time. I’m not the most organized guy on the planet. Pretty much anyone in my life could confirm that for you. Pedantic, yes; OCD, diagnosed; but organized? No, not really. As somewhat befits my lifestyle and career, I like to be surrounded by things I love. I’m not a hoarder, but I’m also not a big believer in sterility. I like to be able to see my tools, my things. Open shelving is my friend, and I am very careful about how I use drawers: Drawers are where things go to die.
A consequence of this is that my desk is, more often than not, coated in stuff. Pictures, books, stationary, watches, camera gear — it’s all within arms reach. In short, my desk is a pretty great representation of how my brain works. Put another way, my desk is a cacophony of seemingly disparate things connected only by a shared surface and a network of invisible threads that will only ever make sense to me. Also, there are a lot of watches.
I love watches, and they take up a huge amount of my time, as well as my physical and mental real estate. But I’m not interested in watches in a vacuum, none of us are (at least not in my experience). Like any hobby, watch enthusiasm is a fluid thing, frequently intersecting and colliding with other interests, passions, and obsessions. An interest in dive watches might lead one collector to learn how to dive, while hours spent on Instagram might encourage a genuine passion for photography in another.
Regardless of what parallel interests brought you to watches, or that watches bring you to, if you’re anything like me, the invisible thread which connects these interests is gear. I’m a big believer in the power of gear. It’s important now to say that gear is never the be-all and end-all — nor is that a perspective I would advocate — but the right piece of gear in the right context can absolutely elevate an experience, and I would never dream of pretending otherwise.
Thankfully, if I’ve learned one thing in my time working with Worn & Wound, it’s that I’m not alone in this — just about everyone at Worn & Wound, and just about everyone I’ve met at a Windup Fair, is as gear addicted as I am. So, with that in mind, I thought it would be worth taking some time to share some of the gear that made all the difference for me this past year.
Peak Design Travel Backpack 45L
Recent associations notwithstanding, Peak Design makes a great backpack, but until this year, it had never really occurred to me to actually buy one. Honestly, in my adult life, I’ve not been a big fan of backpacks. They typically strike me as bulky and I like the immediate access you get from a sling, tote, or briefcase. Broadly speaking, I still prefer those form factors, but I spent more time on the road in 2024 than any year in recent memory, and between short trips to New York, cross-country flights, and month-long road trips, the kit I carried took on new significance this year.
So with a cross-country road trip on the horizon, I finally bit the bullet and picked up the Peak Design Travel Backpack. I opted for the 45L option in black, and that bag served me beautifully on the long drive to San Francisco and back — it even took a quick side trip with me to Chicago for Windup. While I was initially a little skeptical of the hype these bags get, I was sold by the first night. I love the foldaway harness system, the easy access, and the myriad grab handles. Really, there was just one problem: the color.
A black backpack is just slightly too ubiquitous, and with its simple, streamlined design, I ran into a couple of instances where other people reached for my bag, thinking it was theirs. I started to get anxious that a solid black bag was just too generic for comfort. Thankfully, Peak Design chose this year to drop their new Coyote Brown collection. So I traded in my black bag for the new X-Pac option and haven’t looked back.
The Peak Design Travel Backpack has been my default bag choice now for about six months, and I couldn’t be happier with it. I’ve kitted mine out with one of Peak Design’s recently redesigned small camera cubes (perfect for a Micro Four-Thirds body with a couple of primes or my Leica Q2) and a paracord camera strap with a Peak Design Anchor Link, so the bag itself can become my camera harness when I’m using it.
All in all, this has become a critical piece of kit, and while I don’t reach for it every time I leave the house, the Peak Design 45L Travel Backpack has transformed my relationship with backpacks in general and has made a place for itself as the bedrock of my carry system.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G7 with Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
Cards on the table, just before Thanksgiving, the pieces finally fell into place and (with a little help from our friends over at Camera West) I am ending the year with a camera I’ve had my eye on for a long time — the Leica Q2 Reporter Edition. It would be incredibly easy for me to fill the next few paragraphs with praise for what has quickly become my go-to camera, but looking at the year more broadly, it would be disingenuous.
This was the year I started taking photography seriously, and though I wouldn’t presume to call myself a photographer or compare my work to those that do, I do feel that my photography work has shown a clear evolution in both quality and style (though I’m sure some will disagree). None of that would have been possible without my Panasonic Lumix DMC-G7, or the 45mm Leica-recipe Macro lens I’ve paired with it for most of the year. I got my Lumix DMC-G7 at the end of last year from a friend, Evan Johnson, and just about every image I have made this year, for this site and otherwise, came out of this camera.
In a world filled with pixel-peeping YouTube creators and camera reviewers, it can be easy to feel like you need the absolute latest and greatest to take an even halfway decent picture. The reality is you don’t. The Lumix DMC-G7 is just about ten years old and does absolutely everything most people could need a camera to do, and does it well, for shockingly little money — there’s a reason you can still walk into B&H Photo and buy a DMC-G7 today.
In the last year, I’ve used this decade-old mirrorless camera to shoot everything from watches to canyons, and I’ve been thrilled with it. It has its trade-offs, to be sure — low light performance isn’t all that good, the low megapixel sensor makes cropping basically impossible, and the auto-focus lags behind any current generation body — but the size, weight, and ease of use of the oft-ignored system are standout features. And I suspect the availability of incredible, affordable lenses will keep me coming back to this system for a good while yet.
Smallrig RM120
Photography is all about light — literally, photography is just a method of capturing light. With digital cameras as good as they are today, boasting massive dynamic range, easy-to-use auto settings, and high-megapixel sensors, it’s gotten easier than ever to forget about this fundamental truth. Still, not enough light is always a challenge, and earlier this year, it finally occurred to me that it was probably a challenge worth addressing.
Cue the Smallrig RM120, a small LED panel light with full RGB and tone controls. I have three of these panels and they have made all the difference. They act as my primary studio lights, travel with me for impromptu shots, and have even worked as fantastic flashlights or outdoor lights in a pinch. I’m not sure how I’d ever get through a Windup without them. They’re made even better thanks to USB-C charging and an included silicone diffusion cover.
The last few years have seen LED panel lights become almost ubiquitous, and you can now get them from any number of places and makers. I happen to have and like this option from Smallrig, and will happily advocate for them, but do some research. There are plenty of options out there with different blends of features at different prices, and my sense is that pretty much none of them are bad. Regardless, they’re an affordable way of bringing your photography to the next level — you certainly won’t catch me without at least one in my kit any time soon.
Apple Watch
I was early to the Apple Watch. I got my first generation Apple Watch a few weeks after it came out, and wore it fairly regularly for about six months. I hated it. By Christmas that year, I had basically forfeited my Apple Watch, occasionally throwing it on for a tennis match or a workout, but otherwise letting it languish, uncharged, in favor of all manner of enthusiast options.
But over the last decade, a funny thing has happened — the Apple Watch has infiltrated the watch world. Double-wristing has even become a fixture in the Worn & Wound office. I finally realized that, if I really wanted to keep making the argument against the Apple Watch, I probably needed to get a better sense of what the product has become. So, in August, I bought my second-ever Apple Watch.
It’s hard to admit this, but the Apple Watch has become an indispensable tool in my life. I don’t wear it every day, and I rarely wear it outside of a workout, but I can’t ignore that in the years since I put down my first Apple Watch, it’s transformed itself from a slightly irritating iPhone accessory to a remarkable health and fitness product. The Apple Watch’s ability to track hikes and workouts, play music, and keep me accessible, even when I leave my phone behind, has been nothing short of transformational in my life, even if I only wear it in very specific circumstances.
I really don’t consider the Apple Watch a watch, at least not in the traditional sense. That’s why it’s on this list. The Apple Watch may take up the same real estate as a conventional watch, but my experience of the Apple Watch is as a tool, albeit one that does what it does better than anything else I’ve found. Still, the Apple Watch is not primed to take a slot in my watch roll — but it has earned a very clear spot in my tech pouch.
Stage Manager
In case you couldn’t tell from the last entry here, I’m an Apple user. I got my first iPod twenty years ago, and have been fully invested in the Apple eco-system since. One of the real selling points of Mac OS is its consistency, with pretty much every iteration of the software working about the same way as the previous. So it’s not all that often that something comes along and radically transforms how I work on my Mac.
In the last few months, Stage Manager has done just that. Turns out, this has been a feature built into Mac OS for the last few years, but seeing as I’d somehow missed it, I figure some of you have as well. Stage Manager is basically a cleanup tool, organizing all your open windows into clean stacks on the left-hand side of your desktop, and hiding your desktop clutter to let you focus fully on whatever is in front of you.
Since being introduced to Stage Manager in early October, it has become a critical tool to my workflow, and I’m not entirely sure how I missed it for so long. And the best part? It’s totally free and already built into the several latest Mac OS releases (which are also a free upgrade for any Mac user). All you have to do is switch it on in the Desktop & Dock menu in System Settings. You’ll be glad you did.
TSA Pre-Check
I promise we’ll get back to products in a second, but can I just take a second to sing the praises of TSA Pre-Check? If you haven’t gotten this yet, I can’t think of a better use of $78 dollars. I genuinely can’t explain why it took me so long to get around to getting Pre-Check, but now that I have, there’s no way I can go back. TSA lines at airports around the country have gotten completely out of hand, and minimizing the irritation that can come with that step of air travel even a little is entirely worth it.
Besides, it’s never been easier to get TSA Pre-Check, you can do it at just about any Staples, and many of them even have walk-in appointments. Seriously, you could and should get this done today.
L.L. Bean Rubber Mocs
I’m not sure what there is to say about L.L. Bean’s iconic boot that hasn’t already been said or written in the last 112 years. They were the first L.L. Bean product in 1912, and have been debated to death by boot fans and casual observers alike for decades. It’s hard to deny some of the major criticisms of Leon Leonwood’s boot, but I think it’s fair to say that if you like them, you love them, and if you don’t, you don’t.
I happen to fall into the former camp. Bean Boots have been my go-to foul-weather–option since I can remember, and I currently have two pairs of the classic made-in-Maine boots. But weirdly, despite my long-held love for the classic hunting boot, I’ve always resisted Bean’s most low-profile option, the Rubber Moc. Basically a Bean Boot with the top cut off, the Rubber Moc is built with the same iconic rubber bottom as its taller cousins but replaces the ‘boot’ part of the Bean Boot with a short leather tongue and collar.
Growing up, I was always told that Bean started making the Rubber Moc when the company noticed that prep school and college students would continue wearing the rubber portion of the Bean Boots after wearing out the leather uppers. I have since come to understand that this is almost certainly apocryphal, but regardless of how they came to be, there’s no doubt that the Rubber Moc has become an integral part of the Bean catalog.
I finally broke down and got a pair of Rubber Mocs earlier this year, and I absolutely adore them. They live by my front door and act as my go-to option for quick dog walks and errands, and have even replaced my Bean Boots in all but the worst weather. As with all Bean Boots, the sizing can be a little tricky, but if you dial them in right, they’re about as comfortable as a pair of shoes can be, and I cannot recommend them anywhere close to highly enough.
