The Basic Kit

So you’ve just bought your first camera, what do you do with it now? Take pictures of course! We’ll its not that simple. Whether you’re a pro or a hobbyist, there are a few things that everyone should have in and around your camera bag when you’re out in the field.

1. Blower
2. Lens Pen
3. Microfiber clothes
4. Extra batteries
5. Extra memory cards
6. Flash
7. Camera manual

1. Blower. The blower has probably become one of my most used and most essential item in my kit. It does exactly what it sounds like, blow air. If you want sharp clear images without any random spots, the blower is the first line in your defence of dust on your lens and sensor. A couple of blows usually does the trick and it just takes a couple of seconds! I was never a huge fan of using a blower because it never seemed to do the trick for me, I always wiped my lenses with a microfiber cloth, that was until I picked up the Visible Dust Zeeion. Its by far the best blower I’ve ever used, granted I haven’t tried the much loved Rocket Blower, but the Zeeion is great! When most blowers cost between $10 and $20, the Zeeion is a bit on the pricey side at $49.95 CAD, but well worth every penny. The Zeeon works by creating an anti-static charge in the air coming out from it, along with having filters at both the intake and exhaust points, all to ensure you’re not blowing any dust back on your lens or senor. You can purchase the Visible Dust Zeeion blower here.

2. Lens Pen. The second line of defence of the much hated dust is the Lens Pen. There are many third party makers of similar products, but the one I love and trust is the original Lens Pen. It’s a pen shaped device that has a soft brush on one end to remove those stubborn dust particles, and has a non-liquid cleaning element. With today’s manufacturers producing lenses that have special coatings on them, its best not to use any kind of liquid cleaning solution on the lens. These coatings take millions of dollars to develop and are there to help you make that perfect image. Once you remove that coating, the performance of your lens can degrade drastically. So don’t make the mistake of using a cheap liquid cleaner on your thousands of dollars worth in glass. At $14.99 its definitely something all photogs need in their bags. You can pick up your own Lens Pen here.

3. Microfiber clothes. You can not have enough microfiber clothes! You can not have enough microfiber clothes! You can not have enough microfiber clothes! These things are amazing cheap and you can use them for almost everything. At a couple of dollars a pop you should have them in every pocket of your camera bag! Use them to wipe down your lens if its got some moisture on it, clean your camera, there is so much you can do with it. Here’s an example if you’ve never had one of these.

4. Batteries. This is the life blood of your camera, no power, no pictures. Simple as that. So make sure you have plenty of extra with you. I usually have two batteries in my camera (one in the body, one in the battery grip) and carry one or two extra in my bag. You need to keep in mind the conditions that you will be shooting in. Colder temperatures will tend to drain your battery faster. I’ll do a post on cold weather shooting later on. If you’re using your camera’s built in flash, which you should never use, your batter will drain faster. If you spend more time looking at your LCD reviewing your photos, your battery won’t last as long. Just keep in mind where you’ll be shooting and how you’ll be shooting. It’s always better to have more batteries than you need!

5. Memory Cards. As with batteries, you need to have multiple of these. Not only do these cameras produce large files that gobble up memory as if there was no tomorrow, memory cards are the only way you can store your images. So it doesn’t matter if you’ve still got power in your camera when your card is full, you still can’t take any photos. If you fill your card up and have to stand there reviewing each one and deleting them one-by-one, I can bet that you’ll miss a shot. If your camera supports UDMA, take advantage of it and use a UDMA card with your camera, you’ll benefit greatly from the speed of the card. If you’re going on vacation, and think you need a certain number of cards, bring double! Always have more than enough cards, you wont regret it.

6. Flash. While most cameras, if not all, consumer and pro-sumer level camera have a built in flash, its crap! That’s why you never see a professional level camera have a built-in flash. The use of an off-camera flash or bouncing your flash off a wall or a ceiling is the easiest way to make it look like natural light. Using your flash off camera is easier than ever, with such system like Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (CLS) or Canon’s ST-E2 transmitter, you can easily bring your TTL flash off camera with full control. Groups like Strobist have made it so easy to learn the basic and advanced techniques when it comes to using off-camera flashes. You might not always need to use a flash in your situation, but when you need to pop a little bit of light into a scene, having a flash in your bag is priceless.

7. Camera manual. I know, I know, it’s probably the most boring thing you’ve had to ever read. We all hate reading them, but its something you need to do when you get your new camera. Camera’s these days are like mini supercomputers, they can do hundreds of things that photographers could only have wished for not too long ago, and I don’t know about you, but my memory sucks and I can never remember to find a certain menu or turn on a certain function. At the least, you should put tabs in your manual so you can quickly reference something if you need to. Put the manual in the bottom of your bag, and just pull it out when you need it. It’s just an extra safety net for those “Doh” moments in photography. You’re paying, often, thousands of dollars for this piece of technology, you might as well learn how to use it to the fullest!

I hope this will get you started in putting together your photography kit. Oh and did I mention that these items make a great stocking stuffer!

Comments

[david.d]

Microfiber is best for this kind of products. This is a very useful information for me.

thanx