Camera accessories

When your hobby of photography is becoming a more serious pass time and you would like to be more professional at what you do, you can consider purchasing some accessories for your digital camera. You will notice before too long that one or more of the following accessories will improve the quality of your photos as well as the pleasure you take out of your hobby.

• Flashes
• Filters
• Lens hood
• Tripod (or monopod)
• Camera bag
• Lenses: tele and wide angle
• Additional memory cards
• Additional batteries 

Flash The built-in camera flash is usually sufficient if you take photos of objects within a distance of two to three meters. A separate flash however will increase flexibility enormously. You have several types to choose from: a compact flash (mounted on the camera and with a head that can tilt), a ring flash (sometimes referred to as a macro flash and used for macro photography) and a handle mount flash ( a grip is mounted on the side of the camera; this is a flash unit mainly used by professional photographers).

Many camera brands have their own especially made flashes. The camera and the flash are dedicated, so a good performance is guaranteed. Some non camera brands are Sigma and Metz which are available at specialist shops. In general most will work with any type of camera.

You don't have to limit the use of your flash to dimly lit circumstances though, you can also use your flash in daylight circumstances to take away the harsh hard-edged shadows. You can also use a fill in flash to lighten an object more specifically.

The advantage of a flash with a tilt head is that you can use it for indirect flash. The flash is bounced off a reflector on the flash unit. You could for instance point your flash to the ceiling thus softening the light on the subject. You can also add a so called flashlight diffuser to even out the light.

Don't overuse your flash unit however. Digital cameras are perfectly capable of making good quality pictures in low light conditions and you maintain the original, natural atmosphere which is very often lost when using a flash unit.

Filters The many features of digital cameras nowadays have made the use of external color filters somewhat unnecessary, unless your are a real professional who has certain special effects in mind. Three types of filters remain very useful however: The UV protection filter, the polarizing filter and the neutral density (ND) filter. The UV filter absorbs the ultra violet rays in the outdoors like mountainous areas and the sea. This filter is very often used as a permanent filter to protect the lens. A polarizing filter will take away reflections caused by water and glass and the colors become more saturated with a higher contrast. Pictures of blue skies especially will become more blue. Best results are had when the sun is positioned to the left or right of your camera. Choose a circular polar filter when your camera has auto focus (which means every modern camera) or a linear for all other cameras. An ND filter takes away light and makes your pics darker. This allow you to make pictures with longer shutter speeds or wider apertures to decrease depth of field. ND filters are especially useful for video cameras, which often have fixed shutter speeds, to film snow, sand and especially bright scenes. The ND filter will prevent overexposure. The ND filters come in different optical densities, the darker the filer, the greater the effect on the aperture settings. Some well-know excellent filter brands are Hoya, Tiffen and B+W.

Lens hood Also called a lens shade, protect your lens from direct sunlight or another light source. It will prevent glare or lens flare. But you can also use a lens hood when the sun does not shine, you can even use it as replacement for a UV filter. Lens hoods come in different types and shapes: round (preferably not be used with a wide angle lens), tulip shaped hood (used on wide angle en telephoto lenses) and rubber lens hoods that are collapsable.

Tripod By placing your camera on a tripod you avoid shaky pictures under circumstances that are subject to movement. If you use a slow shutter speed, you will not be needing a tripod. There are three kinds op stabilizing stands: minipod, monopod and the widely used tripod. When buying one do not only check the stability, but also the heads of the tripod, they should be steady. The head should not move when your are taking pictures. When you are travelling you may want to opt for a lighter version, a carbon tripod or monopod would be a good choice. Some well known brands are Manfrotto, Velbon and Gitzo. Also note that camcorder tripods usually have slightly different features because you should be able to pan horizontally and vertically smoothly.

Camera bag Camera bags come in many shapes and sizes. Choose a bag that has a flexible arrangement, so you can move things around. It should also be able to hold (some of) your accessories. The body of your camera and your lenses should be well protected so some padding is essential. But you will also need some smaller spaces for filters, a flash unit, an additional battery, etcetera. Furthermore the bag should be comfortable to carry, watch for broad adjustable carrying straps. When you travel a lot you can consider buying an additional bag: one for when you're travelling and the other for use on location when you carry just the camera and the accessories you need at that moment. The bag should protect your camera from dust, rain and heat, so check the materials used for both the outside and the inside. Some camera bags have a built-in rain cover, so instant protection is at hand when a shower hits you. You can also consider buying a special photo backpack, which offers comfort of use especially during hikes when you need more freedom of movement.

Lenses If the lens that comes with your camera is too limited in use, you can consider buying a tele or wide angle lens. A tele lens is a necessary equipment for nature and sports photography. But don't use it only because it is so easy to point and shoot subjects at a great distance. Your picture will come out much better if you walk towards the subject and then take the photo with your normal lens. The effect of a telelens is as if all the elements in the picture are squeezed together. A tele lens has less light strength and can cause distortion of the image. Consider all the pros and cons before buying a lens like this. A wide angle lens will probably be more useful, especially for landscape photographers. The lens offers a larger depth of field. When using a wide angle there is no need to try and capture everything you see in your photo. A photo taken with a wide angle lens will very often be more dramatic when you single out a certain subject and fill the rest of your frame with the surroundings. Remember that all objects in your image will be smaller, so that it is better to stand closer to your subject. This will also avoid too much of the surroundings of the subject where no action is taking place showing up in your picture. A downside of using a wide angle lens is that there may be some barrel distortion at the edges of your image.

Extras: memory cards and batteries. The types that you can use depend on your brand and type of camera. Memory cards nowadays come in relatively big sizes, which will only become bigger. Prices have also dropped dramatically, so there is no reason why you should not buy some additional cards. When you buy multiple cards of smaller sizes, the risk of loosing all your photos in one go when your card gets stolen or damaged is smaller. Batteries are still quite expensive, but having one extras definitely worth the money. When one is in use, you can load the other one. You will never be without a a battery. Be careful with brandless batteries though, they tend to be of (much) lesser quality than original batteries that come with your camera or batteries of other well-known brands.

Some other accessories you can consider buying are a cleaning kit for your camera, a separate battery charger and a memory card reader.

If you would like to know more about digital photography and stock photography in particular, have a look at our links page or perform a search with Google using the search box below:

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