EQUIPMENT & ACCESSORIES

As well as your camera and your lens, you’ll also need something to store your images on, something to edit your images with and a couple of other “essentials” to get you the best shots possible.

Tripods/Monopods

Tripods are essential if you are going to do a lot of low light photography or want to use a slow shutter speed, if you want to go slower than 1/60th of second you’ll need one to eliminate camera shake – not so good if you’re in a rush or on the move as they can take time to set up, in these instances a monopod may be a better option.

Remote Shutter release

A remote shutter release means you can operate your shutter without having to physically touch your camera, meaning you can get in the shot or can be used to also help reduce camera shake.

Flashgun

A flash can be used to provide a burst of light in low light conditions, or add something creative to your composition they can be remote or attached to your camera, and can have automatic and manual settings

Lens hood

A lens hood can be fitted to the front of the lens and usually clips on, while its primary purpose is to block out unwanted light and help prevent lens flare it will also help protect the front of your lens from getting banged or damaged.

Filters

Ultra violet (UV) filter - While UV filters were designed to be used to block UV light and prevent image haze, modern DSLR cameras have a UV filter on the sensor, UV filters can still be used though as they offer a layer of protection on the front of your lens.

Polarizing filter – can be added to help reduce glare from the sun if taking shots through water or to darken skies helping prevent over exposure

Neutral density (ND) filter – An ND filter (neutral density) acts like a pair of sunglasses on your lens, with a varying degree of tint and can be helpful if wanting to use a longer shutter in daylight by preventing over exposure.

Storage

Memory cards –most cameras will use an SD card (abbreviation of secure digital), these are organised by size, and over time their capacity has increased massively.

Original SD card – these store up to 2 gigabytes and come with a little lock “switch” to prevent accidentally deleting/overwriting images, are great ways to store images as due to the size you can carry a few with you, although due to the small capacity they are not really suitable for modern DSLR at high resolution you may only fit 40 images on a card

SDHC card – exactly the same as and SD card but with a much higher capacity – SDHC covers cards from 4-32GB (600+ images)

SDXC card – covers cards from 32GB – 2TB huge capacity

SDUC – covers 2TB upwards

Although all cards are backwards compatible, meaning if your camera will take an SDXC card it can use a card with lower storage (SDHC and SD card) not all cameras can use an SDXC or even fewer use an SDUC so its always worth checking before diving in for the highest you can buy.

CF cards – CF cards (compact flash cards) are another type of memory card usually used in high end cameras, are a little chunkier than SD cards and a bit more robust.

Flash drive/memory stick – these come in various sizes from 128mb right up to 2TB and can be used to store any type of files, from picture and video to documents and music.

Hard drive – usually the largest, with the greatest capacity, can be internal (built into the body of a computer) or external (plug in via USB cable) great for larger file formats (such as camera RAW) and are more robust than memory cards or flash drives.