Best of the Best

While there are techniques you can use to increase the quality of your photography (such as photographing in the Magic Minutes of the early morning or late afternoon), there are a number of ingredients or accessories designed to help you make a better photograph. They revolve around light, camera protection, and camera stability. Most of the Best of the Best accessories recommended will help you to increase the quality of light while the accessories recommended as Best Value focus more evenly on the light for your digital camera as well as camera protection and camera stability.

Quality of Light:
The light is either from the sun, reflection, and ambient room lighting or the light from a camera’s flashgun. The challenge with the built-in consumer digital camera flash is its power consumption. While it supplies a small amount of light, it will drain your batteries faster than showing a few of your friends all of your photos via your camera’s LCD. The Best of the Best accessory for your consumer digital camera is to get the Metz 28 CS-2 Booster Flash. It allows you to have an off-camera flash and increases the power of your flash by a factor of four! The great thing about this accessory is you can use it from one consumer camera to the next. Another way to improve the harsh light encountered on many a photographic outing is to add a polarizing filter to your camera bag. The Sony VF-25CPKS 25 mm kit contains a circular polarizer that is small enough to hold in front of your camera’s lens. It cuts the suns glare and intensifies the blue in the sky.

Camera Stability:
You will need to keep your camera steady. During the Magic Minutes, the light is soft, but it also means you don’t have a lot of it. Your flash won’t be necessary, as you will want to take photographs with only the available natural light. As you turn your flash off, you will be faced with the resulting photograph being out of focus. The best way to counteract camera shake and less-than-sharp images is to use a tripod or a monopod. A monopod can also be used when you are taking product photography.

Have you recently cleaned out your attic and found some small and medium-sized items you would like to sell and need photos of them? When you use the Sharpics D-Flector briefcase, you will have a 24 x 18 inch white product background for your photography. You can even use it to create creative still-life photographs for your newsletter or blog.

Think of making photographs being like following a recipe - adding a few must-have and savvy accessories will certainly spice up your photographs by improving the quality of your images.