A Concise Guide to Essential Photography Accessories

So, maybe you have a telephoto, a standard, and a wide angle lens in your bag? Maybe your camera body is top-notch, and you also have a great flash? Well, what else can you spend good money on?

Joking aside, accessories aren’t simply ways to spend money, they’re tools that’ll help you create the image you want to show and share. “Accessories” as a term makes them seem ‘extra’, but those that I’ll list are in fact essential to how I construct photos.

Essential Photography Accessories #1: Tripod
For long exposures that need to be sharp, this tool is invaluable. A Velbon tripod is what I use for its compactness, price, and it’s low weight. Gitzo and Manfrotto are other manufacturers with excellent quality tripods.

Essential Photography Accessories #2: B+W or Hoya filters
I say these brands specifically because of careful research. Other manufacturers produce fine filters, like Tiffen or Cokin, but for my money I trust these two brands. If you shoot with top quality lenses, you’d be well advised to put the best quality filters on top of them. Put a low-quality filter on a professional-level lens, and you’ve just ruined the “professional” grade glass. A chain is only as good as its weakest link.
As for what filters to buy: only two filters sit in my bag. I use a B+W circular polarizer to cut glare and deepen contrast, and I also use a B+W Neutral Density (ND) filter. ND filters are great for cutting the amount light down, which allows you to work with slow shutter speeds when desired.

Essential Photography Accessories #3: Image Stabilization (IS)
Okay. This isn’t an accessory so much as it’s a feature of lenses, but it’s just that important! I can’t say enough how much I love Image Stabilization. Each manufacturer has a different acronym; Canon’s Image Stabilization (IS), Nikon’s Vibration Reduction (VR), or Sigma’s Optical Stabilization (OS). They all rely on sensitive and ingenious gyros that sense your movement, and counteract it by moving lens parts around. These lenses have saved me countless times when a tripod wasn’t available or convenient. When it comes to Image Stabilization lenses, If you can afford ’em, get ’em.

When shooting in low light, tripods and image stabilizers will be your best friends. To augment their use, though, is the ability with digital cameras to increase the ISO, which is effectively the same thing as using ‘fast’ film. There’s many merits of shooting digital. Learn more in Digital Photography…

No Comments

Leave a Reply

To include code, just include it in [code] [/code] square brackets. Sweet.