Digital Cameras & Camcorders
Janice ChenPoll: What are the most important camera accessories?
Summary: What are the most important camera accessories?
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Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.
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Rachel King
Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.
Rachel started playing with her mother's old Brownie camera when she was just a toddler, working her way up from a Hello Kitty point-and-shoot to training on both film and digital SLRs.
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RE: Poll: What are the most important camera accessories?
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polarizing filter, or a good pair of sun-glasses to shot through.
From the perspective of an SLR, here's what I use most often:
1) Strap (aftermarket - used all the time)
2) External Flash (frequently)
3) Telephoto Lens (55-200mm DX fromat - kids sporting events)
4) Tripod (mostly family group photos/holiday photos)
1) Strap (aftermarket - used all the time)
2) External Flash (frequently)
3) Telephoto Lens (55-200mm DX fromat - kids sporting events)
4) Tripod (mostly family group photos/holiday photos)
If you're traveling a good general purpose zoom lens, extra batteries and memory cards will be most appropriate.
If you want to shoot sunrise/sunsets then obviously a wide angle lens, tripod and remote plus polarizing filter will be far more important.
While for shooting portraits you'll want a good telephoto lens and some off-camera flash accessories.
If you want to shoot sunrise/sunsets then obviously a wide angle lens, tripod and remote plus polarizing filter will be far more important.
While for shooting portraits you'll want a good telephoto lens and some off-camera flash accessories.
You may want to go birding, but without a 600mm f/4 lens you're going to have to get very close, and scare 'em away. The cheap way (stacked teleconverters) don't work nicely for serious stuff.
You may want to shoot macro, but without a good ($$$) macro lens and a solid tripod (Gitzo etc - $$$) you end up with a compromise - reversed 50mm lenses, flash, shaky tripod etc.
It depends entirely on your budget. You tailor your shooting style to your budget if you are sane.
You talk about a tripod - if you're an event photographer you will never use one. A flash comes in handy. If you're doing long exposures, it's the other way round.
There's no real answer to this question / poll.
You may want to shoot macro, but without a good ($$$) macro lens and a solid tripod (Gitzo etc - $$$) you end up with a compromise - reversed 50mm lenses, flash, shaky tripod etc.
It depends entirely on your budget. You tailor your shooting style to your budget if you are sane.
You talk about a tripod - if you're an event photographer you will never use one. A flash comes in handy. If you're doing long exposures, it's the other way round.
There's no real answer to this question / poll.
I'd add polarizing and UV filters to the list
(or, at least), ONE of the silliest polls I've ever seen! As Harlz pointed out, it depends on WHAT you're shooting.
Other great "accessories" are community college classes or a book on lighting & composition so you don't wind up having to delete dozens of photos after a shoot.
I've also found that occasionally dusting off my manual focus FILM cameras for a shoot reduces my tendency to use my digital cameras like an Uzi!
Other great "accessories" are community college classes or a book on lighting & composition so you don't wind up having to delete dozens of photos after a shoot.
I've also found that occasionally dusting off my manual focus FILM cameras for a shoot reduces my tendency to use my digital cameras like an Uzi!
But I have a sneaking admiration for the backup battery and memory card plan. They come just after the case and before everything else.
Reason? The worst photos of all are the ones you don't take.
Reason? The worst photos of all are the ones you don't take.
For me the external card reader is now the most important accessory after having been too quick to delete the photos from the camera, wrongly assuming they were all copied to Picasa - NOT. Picasa crashed and that was the end of that. (Had I been able to read the card I might have tried undelete but am going to try to recover it using Pandora or similiar as soon as I get that external card reader!)
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