PhotoWalkPro

I was chatting with a friend the other day about their new camera and they asked me what they should really buy next to improve their photos.  They had just purchase a Nikon D90 and loved the camera but they were anxious to start improving their photography beyond just a camera and a kit lens.  I’m sure that a lot of you quickly thought that a new lens is definitely a must to get better photos but I say, not so fast.  This is not an easy question to answer until some more information is available.  There are a couple of questions that will really define which piece of gear will be of benefit.  Just saying that a new lens will help might be true, but what if the lens that they have covers the desired range that they want for now.

What if they want to take pictures at parties or maybe portraits?  The 18-55mm lens that comes with most cameras has an effective focal length of about 70mm on a full frame camera.  That’s a pretty decent lens length for portraits.  But what about that pop-up flash?  Maybe it should be replaced with a decent speed light.  The built in flash on most DSLR cameras is, at best, only good for fill light.  With no ability to point it anywhere but directly at the subject makes it incapable of providing any decent or flattering light.  Start bouncing light off a ceiling or a wall and you now have the ability to add shape and dimension and take a decent photo of a person.

Maybe what they want is to take great landscape photos in which case a good tripod would be their best investment.  VR lenses aren’t going to cut it when you want to take low ISO, high F-Stop photographs at sunrise or sunset.  Having a great tripod is probably one of the most important accessories for providing tack-sharp images in these situations.

There are a lot of other options as well but that’s where today’s poll comes in.  Let me know what you think is the most important, “gotta have” accessory for your digital camera.

By the way, my recommendation was a SB-900 Speedlight. I’ll let you know how it works out.

I was driving home on Friday, enjoying all the new foliage on the trees and just how vibrant all the colors were in the afternoon sun.  Then I took my sunglasses off for a minute and the funniest thing happened, all the trees were a lot less colorful.  In fact, everything looked a little cool.  Then it hit me, my sunglasses are polarized.  The minute I slipped them back on, that coolness went away and everything was back to being so vivid.  This is the same reason that you should use a polarizing filter whenever you go landscape shooting, so you can capture all the true colors in your scene.

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I really love my Black Rapid R-Strap.  It’s the perfect accessory for shooting on the go.  The strap offers much more comfort when walking around with my camera and makes it super accessible when I want to grab a quick shot.  There is one problem that I have found when using it though and that is when I want to transition between using the strap and setting my camera up on a tripod for some late-night or HDR shooting.  See, normally the Rapid-R has a great little attachment for clipping the strap to the camera called the Fasten-R2.  It’s a d-ring with a rubber spacer that keeps it snugly mounted to the camera by the tripod mounting socket.  This also means that I have to remove the Fasten-R2 whenever I want to mount the camera to the tripod.  It’s not a big thing but it does sort of interrupt the flow of things.

I solved that problem by using a quick-release tripod head.  The quick-release mount attaches to the camera on the bottom via the tripod mounting screw.  The trick is that my quick-release plate uses a d-ring to tighten the mounting screw into the camera base.

Now, I simply keep the plate attached all the time and attach it to the Rapid-R Strap with R-Strap’s clip. Then, when I want to use my tripod, I simply un-clip the strap and lock the plate into the tripod head and I’m all set for stable shooting.

It’s not a big mod but it makes all the difference when I want to quickly transition from hand-holding to tripod and back again.  Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference.

I am curious if any of you have used any of the Eye-Fi brand SD cards for your photography.  I discovered that the D5000 actually has Eye-Fi functionality built in and I find the concept pretty interesting but I have never tried one.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Eye-Fi cards, they are SD memory cards that have built-in wi-fi technology.  This allows you to actually upload images to your computer or to a photo-sharing site such as Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, and more, all from inside your camera.  There are actually 4 flavors of Eye-Fi with varying capabilities from simple home computer transfer to those that geotag and allow access to over 10,000 wi-fi hotspots.

I love the concept of going out for a morning shoot, coming home and grabbing a bite to eat, and then sitting down at my computer to look at my automatically downloaded images.  The problem is that I don’t own one nor do I know anyone that has used one, so I’m not sure just how well they work.  I would love to get one to test in the D5000 (and possibly add it to my bonus chapter on camera accessories) but I don’t want to waste my money if it’s not worth the trouble.  So if any of you has had any experience using one, I would love to hear about it.  You can find out more about Eye-Fi cards by clicking here.

It doesn’t matter how hard you try and shelter your camera from the evil dust bunnies, sooner or later they are going to get the best of you.  It seems that I am always locked in battle with them, along with the evil smudge monsters that attack my lens whenever I turn my back for a moment.  This is why I always carry a few secret weapons in my camera bag.

The first weapon in my dust busting arsenal is my Giottos Large Rocket Blaster.  This little football shaped tool delivers a nice powerful blast of air to blow away most loose dust and debris.  The nice thing about it is that it draws in air from the back and delivers it out of the nozzle so that you aren’t sucking the dust back into the ball and then blowing it back out onto your equipment again.

If I need to move to something a bit more intense for cleaning my lens, I pull out my handy Spudz 18% Gray Micro-Fiber Cleaning Cloth.  Not only is this a great soft cloth for cleaning lenses (and sunglasses) but it’s also 18% gray so it doubles as my gray card for metering or getting a good white balance.  Not bad for 10 bucks.

The last tool in my bag is my secret weapon for those little grease smudges that always seem to find their way onto my glass.  Don’t ask me who is sneaking up when I am not looking and smearing their dirty little fingerprints on my lens.  Well, when it does happen, it’s time for me to whip out the LensPEN.  If you don’t own one of these little marvels of lens cleaning science, I highly recommend that you get one.  There is a retractable soft brush on one end but the real magic happens on the other end where the carbon cleaning tip makes grease and grime vanish from the surface of the lens.  It is the best $10 you can spend for ensuring that your lenses stay clean and clear.

So there you have it, 3 handy little tools that will go a long way to keeping away the dust and grime and letting you get clean images from your camera and lens.