Vallerret Photography Gloves for Winter - Markhof Pro V3 Review

In the last couple of months, I led two photography workshops in the Dolomites and Iceland, photographing insanely beautiful winter sceneries, from the jagged peaks in Italy to the white expanses of snow in the Icelandic highlands. Freezing cold weather makes the photography process more tricky, and clothing becomes a key element for a landscape photographer to consider if your goal is not only capturing images but also enjoying a great experience in the field.

Having the right clothing won’t exactly improve your image quality, but it can make your adventure far more pleasant. You need to carefully select your items, and for landscape photography, you’ll need to prepare nearly all items from socks to the hat.

I tolerate the cold quite well, but I always want to protect my hands by wearing warm and reliable gloves. As photographers, we stand around quite a lot in the cold, and standing around reduces the elements of circulation and you really begin to feel cold and the extremities of your body. So, gloves are a damn good idea.

In my opinion, the most important things that make gloves good are warmth, dexterity, weatherproofing, and construction/durability. And when it comes to photography I’d add three more things: good grip and ease of operating a camera, and ease of operating a smartphone.

My Favorite Gloves for Landscape Photography

For these two trips, Vallerret photography gloves was kind enough to send me a couple of pairs of their gloves, the new Markhof Pro V3, and the Power Stretch Pro Liner with touch as an additional base layer that provides even more warmth in freezing conditions.

What’s special about these gloves, is they’re designed for photographers and that’s the key thing. Anything that you have to do in your hands gets awkward when your hands are kind of inside something like a glove. You just don’t have the dexterity, the feel, or anything else to do things and it makes certain things difficult.

Key Features & Design

They’ve got, what they call “FlipTech finger caps” with magnets on them so when you open the fingertips you can fold them back and the magnets allow them to stay in place, which is a  really useful feature. And, having used the Markhof V1 model in the past, Vallerret definitely improved the quality.

Another neat feature is a little zipper pocket on the back of each glove, and in one of them, there is a surprisingly useful surprise hidden inside. There is a little tool with the Vallerret logo that you can use as a screwdriver for your tripod plates or camera L-bracket. I usually use a dedicated screwdrivers tool, but having something like this built into the glove is a really thoughtful inclusion. The pockets are about deep enough to put in a small thermal pack, to increase even more the warmth.

The Additional Layer

During my Iceland trip, I spent an entire morning in an ice cave. Pouring rain for the entire day. So, a pretty tough session. I didn’t have any problems with these gloves. However, even if these gloves are best suited to cold, I would say they perform the best in dry-ish conditions. If you are going to be doing anything technical or doing something where your hands will be exposed to water for a few hours at a time you might need a more weatherproof glove.

Vallerret also has a few different options for liners. I use the Power Stretch Pro Liner with touch inside my gloves which I found excellent, especially in windy freezing cold conditions. They’re also really great by themselves when it’s a little chilly outside.

The fingers (index and thumb) have a ‘touch’ technology that allows you to use both your camera and phone as normal. That being said, I have had some issues with the liners of other brands in the past. What I noticed is that they typically didn’t last for much longer than a few months. After a couple of months of use, the touch of the Power Stretch Pro liner works perfectly. I’m pretty happy with it.

Gloves for landscape photography are a brilliant invention to overcome the discomfort of frozen hands and the difficulties of using your camera wearing thick gloves. These are the best all-around photography gloves I’ve used. They’re very versatile and they use excellent materials that don’t make them feel big and bulky when wearing.

I like them so much that they’ve become the glove I reach for everything except prolonged exposure to wet conditions. Fantastic feature-packed, well-designed, comfortable, and dexterous glove. Honestly, I can’t imagine spending future winters without them.

My Recommendation

I’d recommend getting either the Markhof Pro V3 along with the touchscreen Power Stretch Pro liner. With the liner underneath there’s very little to quibble about at all. I can’t recommend these enough.

If you’re looking for a new glove for your photography these Vallerret gloves are highly recommended and you can check them out on Vallerret’s Website, www.photographygloves.com.