Accessories for Photography 91 Items You Need in 2022

Photography is a great pastime and can be a wonderful source of zen-like relaxation. When interacting with a subject and surrounding composition, the whole world and all its drama just seems to disappear.

Whether you are pursuing photography as a hobby, as a semi-pro, or as a full-time profession, there are some absolute truths; the main one is that you will need to get your hands on photography accessories.

What you will need to add to your kit will vary greatly depending on your passion. Wedding photographers need flashes, reflectors, and backgrounds; in contrast, Landscape photographers need tripods, filters, and rain covers; and everyone needs more batteries, straps, and SD cards.

Below we’ve compiled a list of photography accessories for you to look through organized by photography style. Have a look and let us know if we’ve missed anything.

Here we go…

What are some Essential Photography Accessories?

Extra Batteries

Batteries are your camera’s lifeblood. Nothing is more painful than to have to pause your creative efforts to let your camera’s battery recharge. It’s a great plan to have extra, and I mean 3-4, batteries charged and ready to go so you will never be out of power.

Important Tip – Ensure that the batteries are the correct type for your camera body. Some camera brands have many different sizes of batteries, and they are not interchangeable.

Battery Charger

Almost all camera manufacturers are stingy and don’t provide an external battery charger. They seem to expect that you’ll be satisfied with charging your lone battery in the camera. Well, once you have all those extra batteries, you should get a good external charger for them.

Bonus points if it works in the house and the car.

Extra Memory Card

Memory cards are where your camera will store its images. If your card fills up, gets damaged, or lost, then your camera won’t work anymore. It’s a great idea to have an extra card on hand if something goes wrong.

Important Tip – Most cameras use what is called an SD card. However, others use may use a compact flash or micro SD. Make sure you buy one that matches what you have by checking your camera manual.

Camera Bag

A basic camera bag is an essential bit of kit. Your bag is where you will store all the cards, batteries, cables, and other accessories that you will want to take with you into the field or just to keep everything together for convenient storage.

Camera bags come in many shapes and sizes, from small shoulder bags to large backpacks. Take a look through them at your camera store and find one that fits your personality.

Camera Strap

The straps that come in the retail box are just simple basic straps. You will feel much more secure carrying your camera around with a strong, wide strap. A good strap will feel balanced and will not dig into your shoulder. Also, look for strong, well-made attachment points where the strap meets the camera.

Your strap is also another place to personalize your kit. Additionally, a colorful strap will be easy to spot if you lay your camera down on the ground.

Basic Tripod

The job of a Tripod is to hold your camera steady. A steady camera is essential when taking pictures at a shutter speed slower than 1/100th of a second. Many people think that there is something wrong with their camera or lens when shots come out blurry, but often the softness is motion blur caused by hand-holding the camera at too slow of a shutter speed.

Additionally, tripods come in handy when using a telephoto lens. When zoomed in, you can keep correctly targeted on your subject, and, to a greater degree, any movement of the camera or photographer can easily spoil an image.

A basic tripod should be able to hold your camera’s weight, have a head that allows the camera to swing 360 degrees, and legs will collapse down into 3-4 segments.

Extra Lens Caps

There are three types of caps – Lens caps, mount caps, and body caps. These are all different and all easy to lose. The job of all caps is to protect your equipment from dust and damage.

Lens caps go on the front end of the lens and protect the main lens element. They are sized in millimeters (mm) by the filter threads of the front of the lens. A notation ɸ (phi – used to indicate diameter) and a number printed somewhere on the lens showing the filter and lens cap size. It’s a good idea to have an extra cap in your camera bag for your favorite lens.

Back caps and body caps are essential too. Fortunately, they are all the same size for your camera. The back cap fits on the back of the lens, and the body cap is used on your camera if no lens is attached. It’s a good idea to have a spare back cap and body cap in your back to keep your equipment safe and dust-free.

SD Card Reader

Some cameras can connect directly to other devices, but transferring images can be slow. Removing the card from your camera and using a card reader is so much reliable and faster.

An SD card reader connects to a computer or tablet so that you can copy your images off the card for processing and sharing.

Make sure to get a card reader that is compatible with your card type (SD, microSD, Compact Flash) and your computing device’s USB ports (USB, USB-C)

Color/Grey Card

This one’s more on the advanced side. A color card is used to adjust the color in the photo and remove any color-casts from the light in the image, e.g., too warm (reddish) or cold (bluish). You take a picture with the card in the frame to use it. Then later, when processing the image, you can check the color correction for the photo using the know colors on the card. Then apply that correction to all the pictures you took under the same conditions.

Digital Photo Processing Accessories

After capturing an image with your digital camera, you will need to process it. Processing involves using a computer program to view and edit the image. Simple programs allow you to crop, change the exposure, or make minor modifications to the picture. More complex programs will even allow you to remove or add elements to the image.

Computer/Tablet

Once you start your journey into photography, you’ll feel the need to do some post-processing on your images. Cameras are great for capturing a scene, but they don’t have any facility to edit the resulting image except for cell phone cameras.

So to edit your images, whether it’s cropping and straightening or more aggressive changes, you’ll need a computer or a tablet. You won’t need the top of the line here, just something with though memory to run editing software and plenty of storage to save the final images.

Photo Processing Software

Photo editing requires software. Both Macs and PCs have free editing software included, but these tools are pretty lacking in the long run. Fortunately, there is plenty of free 3rd party software, so you won’t have to invest in expensive tools like Lightroom if you don’t want to. Also, if you are editing your images on a tablet device, check the app stores. There are a lot of excellent choices.

Monitor Calibrator

When you start to get serious about editing your images, it helps to have your monitor calibrated. A calibrator makes sure that the colors you see on your monitor’s screen are actually correct. It’s a crappy surprise to see your favorite picture on someone else’s screen and see the colors are all different.

Backup Solution – Drive/NAS/Cloud

It’s sad that if you keep all your images on a computer, they could be one hard disk failure from being gone forever. Since we don’t want to lose those memories, you must start backing up your images to another device.

The backup can be on a simple external USB drive or to a service somewhere in the cloud. As long as you have your images in at least two places (three is even better), your files are less likely to get lost.

Important Tip – If you back up to a USB drive, make sure to store that drive somewhere else. If you keep it at your house and there is a fire, you could lose both copies!

Camera Cleaning and Maintenace Accessories

Blower

A blower is a helpful tool to clean the dust off of your lenses and camera. It’s a simple device with a squeeze bulb and a strawlike end that lets you blow a stream of air to clean off any particles.

My favorite blower looks like a little football rocket.

Important Tip – Never, ever use what’s called Canned Air to clean your lens or camera sensor. It’s way too strong, and way too cold, and will damage your camera equipment.

Microfiber Cleaning Cloth

A cloth like this should be a goto item in your bag, from cleaning lenses to wiping off the display on the back of the camera, you can’t go wrong with one of these. Don’t worry too much about buying a ton of these, after a few years, you’ll have more than you could possibly use.

Lens Pen

A lens pen is a specialized device for cleaning difficult smudges off of your lens. One end has a slightly curved carbon/rubber tip, and the other has a soft brush.

A Lens Pen is an excellent option if you’ve used the blower and cloth and the lens is still not clean.

Advanced – Sensor Cleaning Swabs

After a camera has been in use for a while and you’ve been swapping lenses, there’s a good chance itYeah will end up with dust on its sensor. You can take the camera into your local shop, and they can clean the sensor off for you for a small fee (and you can look at all the goodies there while they are working on your camera).

Another route is to get a set of Sensor Cleaning Swabs and take a crack at it yourself. Cleaning a sensor is not difficult, and the kits come with great instructions on the process. Remember not to touch the sensor with your finger or press too hard on it with the cleaning swab, there are a lot of megapixels down there, and you don’t want to lose any.

Studio Portrait Photography Accessories

Studio Portrait Photography is about capturing the attitude and personality of the person you are taking a picture of. This style of photography is usually taken in the studio but may also be on location. For this section, we’ll focus on work in the studio. See the suggested accessories in the Wedding Photography Accessories section for on-location Portrait Photography.

Make sure you’ve reviewed the Essential Photography Accessories list to ensure you have the basics covered.

Speedlight

Speedlights, also known as Flashes or Strobes, provide instantaneous bright light on your subject and background. They are an essential element to creating lighting effects in the studio.

These battery-powered units can be mounted on your camera’s hot shoe or placed on an off-camera mount. Off-camera speedlights will need to be activated by a trigger or another speedlight.

Important Tip – Not all speedlights are compatible with your camera’s hot shoe. Make sure to check the light for compatibility before buying one.

Flash Trigger

If you are using speedlights off-camera, one of the best ways to control when and how bright the lights fire is to use a flash trigger unit mounted on your camera’s hot shoe. Triggers can control multiple speedlights simultaneously so that you can set up your lights to have one on your subject and another on the background.

If your speedlight does not have a built-in receiver compatible with your trigger, you will need to add receiver units that the speedlight mounts on. It’s easiest to find a set with a compatible trigger and speedlight, then add to that set as you build out your gear.

Continuous Lighting

Continuous lighting is different from the quick pop of a speedlight. By remaining on all the time, it’s easier for the photographer to see the lighting’s effect on the subject. The downside of continuous lighting is that it is not as bright as a speedlight, and you will have to mount your camera on a tripod to achieve the correct exposure.

The best types of continuous lighting units are LED-based rather than CFL. LED units typically offer brightness and color temperature adjustments that will aid in adding artistic elements to your work.

Lighting Stand

If you plan on mounting lights, speedlights, or holding up backgrounds – you will need to invest in one or more light stands. Based on your specific needs, you might be able to start off with some simple, collapsible light stands. However, I would suggest getting some true C-Stands for a full-time studio. These are more robust and can hold up heavy items.

Combined with clamps and boom arms, you can create a scaffolding to hold your lighting and other equipment.

Clamps

Clamps are handy extra hands you will need around the studio. From basic spring clamps to complex C-Stand pivot clamps, there’s nothing better than knowing your set will not fall down in the middle of a shoot.

Soft Box

Softboxes are the main style of lighting modifier. Using a softbox, you can turn a bright light source into the more diffused lighting needed in many portrait lighting setups. Softboxes are set up with a speedlight or continuous light placed inside the back of the softbox. The softbox is then aimed at the subject to provide directional, controlled lighting.

Reflectors & Diffusers

Reflectors and diffusers help you to tune the light falling on your subject. By bouncing or blocking the light from your light sources, you can control exactly where a little kick of light or shadow falls.

Studio Tripod

A studio tripod is a specialized, heavy-duty, highly stable platform to mount your camera. Typically offering a higher load capacity, a studio tripod will be heavier, which is fine for in-studio, but I wouldn’t plan on taking it on a hike with it.

Tethering Cable

A tethering cable allows you to connect your camera to a computer or tablet. This lets you display what the camera is seeing on a larger screen and control the camera’s settings from another device. This feature is supported by most modern cameras.

Backdrops and Backgrounds

I’m sure the walls and floors of your studio are great, but you’ll also need to get some backdrops. The primary type of background is a fabric or muslin sheet that you can hang behind the subject using light stands and crossbars.

In addition to backdrops, there are also background panels that simulate walls or floors. Typically 4-foot square, these are great for small scenes where the subject will fit in or on the background panel.

Foam Boards and Flats

Foam Boards & Flats are helpful DIY tools for creating backgrounds, reflectors to fill light, and flags to create shadows. These are very inexpensive to pick up at the art store, or you can make them on your own with heavy cardboard and spray paint.

Wedding Photography Accessories

Wedding Photography requires much the same skills and gear as being in the studio for portraits – the big difference is that you are on site instead of in your own studio. One day you may be in a big church, and another day on a beach, and another in a backyard. Since you won’t know the situation ahead of time, make sure your accessories are flexible and work in any environment.

Make sure you’ve reviewed the Essential Photography Accessories list to ensure you have the basics covered.

Speedlight

Speedlights, also known as Flashes or Strobes, provide instantaneous bright light on your subject and background. They are an essential element to creating lighting effects in the studio.

These battery-powered units can be mounted on your camera’s hot shoe or placed on an off-camera mount. Off-camera speedlights will need to be activated by a trigger or another speedlight.

Important Tip – Not all speedlights are compatible with your camera’s hot shoe. Make sure to check the light for compatibility before buying one.

Flash Trigger

If you are using speedlights off-camera, one of the best ways to control when and how bright the lights fire is to use a flash trigger unit mounted on your camera’s hot shoe. Triggers can control multiple speedlights simultaneously so that you can set up your lights to have one on your subject and another on the background.

If your speedlight does not have a built-in receiver compatible with your trigger, you will need to add receiver units that the speedlight mounts on. It’s easiest to find a set with a compatible trigger and speedlight, then add to that set as you build out your gear.

Continuous Lighting

Continuous lighting is different from the quick pop of a speedlight. By remaining on all the time, it’s easier for the photographer to see the lighting’s effect on the subject. The downside of continuous lighting is that it is not as bright as a speedlight, and you will have to mount your camera on a tripod to achieve the correct exposure.

The best types of continuous lighting units are LED-based rather than CFL. LED units typically offer brightness and color temperature adjustments that will aid in adding artistic elements to your work.

Lighting Stand

From mounting lights, speedlights, or holding up backgrounds, you will need to invest in light stands. You can possibly get away with simple, collapsible stands based on your specific needs.

Soft Box

Softboxes are the main style of lighting modifier. Using a softbox, you can turn a bright light source into the more diffused lighting needed in many portrait lighting setups. Softboxes are set up with a speedlight or continuous light placed inside the back of the softbox. The softbox is then aimed at the subject to provide directional, controlled light.

Reflectors & Diffusers

Reflectors and diffusers help you to tune the light falling on your subject. By bouncing or blocking the light from your light sources, you can control exactly where a little kick of light or shadow falls.

Macro Photography Accessories

Macro photography is a style that captures a subject at life-size or greater. It allows you to explore close-up the world of nature (or toys, they make great subjects too). The difficulties that a photographer will need to work out have to do with getting close to the subject and holding it still. Then getting enough light on the subject to get the details you’re looking for.

Make sure you’ve reviewed the Essential Photography Accessories list to ensure you have the basics covered.

Extension Tubes

If you don’t have the money for a macro lens, you can still achieve a macro level of magnification using Extension Tubes. These simple rings are placed between a standard lens and the camera body to allow the lens to focus on closer subjects and thus create magnified images. Since they do not contain any glass elements or electronics, you can inexpensively pick up a set of Extension Tubes.

Tip – Look for Extension Tubes that pass the electronic signals between the lens to your camera body. That way, autofocus may work, and the lens settings will be saved with your image.

Reversing Ring

A Reversing Ring is somewhat similar to Extension Tubes, but in this case, it is used to mount the lens backward on your camera, again achieving close focus and magnification. A reversing ring needs to fit your lens’ filter ring size and your camera’s lens mount. Like Extension Tubes, they do not contain any glass elements or electronics, so you can inexpensively pick up a Reversing Ring that works with your camera and lens.

Remote Shutter Release

Camera movement and vibration are intensified when taking close-up images. A remote shutter release lets your camera capture an image without touching the shutter button.

Focusing Rail

A Focusing Rail lets you move your camera forwards and backward or even left to right in tiny increments. This allows you to precisely compose your scene. They are also necessary to take a series of images to the focus stack.

Small LED Flashlight

A small and powerful LED flashlight works like a miniature spotlight and is handy for getting light into the exact spot you need it.

Continuous LED Lighting

Continuous lighting is different from the quick pop of a speedlight. By remaining on all the time, it’s easier for the photographer to see the lighting’s effect on the subject. This is especially helpful in Macro Photography when you need to know the impact of the lighting setup on your photo’s subject.

The best types of continuous lighting units are LED-based rather than CFL. LED units typically offer brightness and color temperature adjustments that will aid in adding artistic elements to your work.

Ring Flash

A Ring Flash attaches directly to the end of a lens and creates a bright, even light on the subject.

Micro Clamps and Spring Clamps

Tiny subjects require tiny holders. A set of small clamps are great assistants when getting flowers or small subject pieces to stay in the right place for your composition.

Flower Frog

A simple thing with an unusual name, a Flower Frog is used in floral arrangements. It has a heavy metal base with spikes out of the top. Flower stems are pushed into the spikes and arranged in any alignment for you to photograph.

Cloth Background

Like backdrops in Portrait Photography, you often need to add a background behind your macro subject to reduce distractions. A simple piece of black cloth hung behind your subject works excellent.

Stands

You should get an assortment of small stands to hold up your background or mount lights for your macro scene. You can DIY these from a plastic conduit or get small light stands from your photography store.

Flexible Clamp

If you are in the field and want to capture a macro of a flower, a flexible clamp is a great way to hold it from moving around – in the breeze that will start up as soon as you set focus.

Tabletop Lightbox

A lightbox is an empty box with translucent white sides and a smooth, white backdrop. The lightbox is lit from above or in front to reduce shadows and create an even light on the subject. You place your subject inside the box and rotate it as necessary to get the view you are looking for.

Light Table

A light table produces even light from a large flat surface. It creates a backlight for a subject that is placed on the surface. One powerful use of a light table for Macro Photography is placing translucent subjects on the table and shooting through them.

Tweezers

A set of tweezers are perfect for moving flower petals or small subjects around to create your macro composition.

Eyedropper

Placing drops of water directly on a flower or putting a splash of colored milk into a glass of water, nothing works better than a simple eyedropper.

Spray Bottle

Adding a slight coating of water or glycerin with a spray bottle is a great way to add a little texture and pop to a subject.

Landscape Photography Accessories

Landscape photography captures the essence of nature and the outdoors to bring the viewer into the scene. Grand vistas to intimate details, these images demonstrate the connection between the photographer and nature, capturing the beauty of the world around.

Landscape photographers typically carry all their gear in a single backpack, so there is a focus on getting quality equipment with a lower weight.

Make sure you’ve reviewed the Essential Photography Accessories list to ensure you have the basics covered.

Sturdy and Light Tripod

The best landscape photography is always taken on a good stable tripod. Using a tripod allows you to frame up your scene in a stable way and remove any motion blur from the camera.

When you use techniques like focus stacking, HDR, long exposure, or timelapse – you must use a tripod to have any hope of success.

The trade-offs to consider with sandscape tripods are price, sturdiness, and weight. Find the best mix for your situation.

L-Bracket

An L-Bracket or L-Plate attaches to your camera and connects it to a tripod head. It allows you to quickly change the orientation from landscape (horizontal) to portrait (vertical) without having to fuss with your tripod’s head. Using an L-Bracket, you can quickly recompose a shot to take the best advantage of the scene in front of you.

Waterproof Camera Backpack

When you take your gear out into the wild, you’ll want to ensure that it’s protected from the elements. Getting a camera backpack or bag to keep the rain out is an excellent way to start. Some bags are made from weatherproof material others come with a built-in rail shield that can be deployed when the precipitation begins to enhance your day.

Rain Covers

Most cameras are weatherproofed against light rain or snow. However, if your’s isn’t or you want to keep raindrops off your lens and back screen, look into getting a rain cover. Like a poncho for your camera, a rain cover is typically a plastic bag sized to fit the camera and lens. They pack up pretty small and are inexpensive for the insurance they provide.

Gloves

If the weather is getting cold, there’s nothing worse than freezing fingers in the field. A pair of warm, flexible finger gloves are a must for autumn and winter photography.

Intervalometer

An Intervalometer connects to your camera and will activate the shutter at a fixed interval. This allows you to shoot a series of images over a period of time and create timelapse movies.

Polarizer Filters

Polarizing filters help remove reflections from water or glass in a scene. They are great for reducing the glare coming off a lake or increasing contrast in the sky.

Neutral Density (ND) Filters

Neutral density filters are like sunglasses for your lens. By blocking the light, they darken a scene. ND filters are typically used when the sky is too bright for the camera or when creating long exposure images.

Headlamp

A headlamp is almost essential when moving with your gear in the dark. These hands-free flashlights attach to a strap on your head and allow you to illuminate where you are looking. If you are interested in astrophotography, then make sure you get a lamp that has both white and red lights to keep you from losing your night vision.

Hand Warmers

Hand warmers use a chemical reaction to generate a little heat. You can slip one of these pouches in your glove or pocket to warm your hands when out in a cold location.

Product Photography Accessories

Product photography involves taking pictures of products for commercial use. Whether the image is used in marketing material or on an eCommerce site, the product has to be shown with excellent lighting and detail so customers will get the feel of the product, even if they can not touch it.

If you enjoy Product Photography, be sure to review the Studio Portrait Photography and Food Photography sections.

Make sure you’ve reviewed the Essential Photography Accessories list to ensure you have the basics covered.

​Tripod w/ Lateral Arm

You need to get your camera into front and overhead positions when taking product photography. A tripod with an arm will allow you to easily extend the camera over the top of the subject.

Typically these tripods have a center column that can be extended and then levered out and over. An important thing to remember is that you will need a counterbalance weight to offset your camera, or the whole tripod will tip over.

Tethering Cable

A tethering cable allows you to connect your camera to a computer or tablet. This lets you display what the camera is seeing on a larger screen and control the camera’s settings from another device. This feature is supported by most modern cameras.

Brushes

Brushes are the perfect tool for cleaning bits of dust on a product. It’s a good idea to have a variety of brushes, from small model brushes to full-sized paintbrushes.

Tweezers

A set of tweezers are perfect for moving flower petals or small subjects around to create your macro composition.

Backdrops

I’m sure the walls and floors of your studio are great, but you’ll also need to get some backdrops. The primary type of background is a fabric or muslin sheet that you can hang behind the subject using light stands and crossbars.

In addition to backdrops, there are also background panels that simulate walls or floors. Typically 4-foot square, these are great for small scenes where the subject will fit in or on the background panel.

Tabletop Lightbox

A lightbox is an empty box with translucent white sides and a smooth, white backdrop. The lightbox is lit from above or in front to reduce shadows and create an even light on the subject. You place your subject inside the box and rotate it as necessary to get the view you are looking for.

Clamps

Clamps are handy extra hands you will need around the studio. From basic spring clamps to complex C-Stand pivot clamps, there’s nothing better than knowing your set will not fall down in the middle of a shoot.

Food Photography Accessories

Like the great still-life painters of old, Food Photography focuses on the simple beauty of what we eat. This art form relishes in the sensual nature of food and how it appeals to our inner hunger.

With almost every restaurant moving to online menus, there is a huge call for food photographers. Simple cell phone snaps of food won’t sell the dish. They need to have some high-quality photography to compete with other restaurants.

Food Photography has a lot in common with Studio Portrait Photography and Product Photography, so check those sections out as well.

Also, make sure you’ve reviewed the Essential Photography Accessories list to ensure you have the basics covered.

Tripod w/ Lateral Arm

You need to get your camera into front and overhead positions when taking product photography. A tripod with an arm allows you to extend the camera over the top of the subject.

Typically these tripods have a center column that can be extended and then levered out and over. An important thing to remember is that you will need a counterbalance weight to offset your camera, or the whole tripod will tip over.

Tethering Cable

A tethering cable allows you to connect your camera to a computer or tablet. This lets you display what the camera is seeing on a larger screen and control the camera’s settings from another device. This feature is supported by most modern cameras.

Spray Bottle

Adding a slight coating of water or glycerin with a spray bottle is a great way to add a little texture and pop to a subject.

Brushes

Brushes are the perfect tool for cleaning bits of dust on a product. It’s a good idea to have a variety of brushes, from small model brushes to full-sized paintbrushes.

Tweezers

A set of tweezers are perfect for moving flower petals or small subjects around to create your macro composition.

Backdrops

I’m sure the walls and floors of your studio are great, but you’ll also need to get some backdrops. The primary type of background is a fabric or muslin sheet that you can hang behind the subject using light stands and crossbars.

In addition to backdrops, there are also background panels that simulate walls or floors. Typically 4-foot square, these are great for small scenes where the subject will fit in or on the background panel.

Tabletop Lightbox

A lightbox is an empty box with translucent white sides and a smooth, white backdrop. The lightbox is lit from above or in front to reduce shadows and create an even light on the subject. You place your subject inside the box and rotate it as necessary to get the view you are looking for.

Clamps

Clamps are handy extra hands you will need around the studio. From basic spring clamps to complex C-Stand pivot clamps, there’s nothing better than knowing your set will not fall down in the middle of a shoot.

Street Photography Accessories

Street photography tells the story of everyday life. Typically done in an urban environment, this form of photography candidly documents the human condition. To be successful, you should look for a simple and light camera and lens that won’t make you stick out like, “Hey, I have a camera, and I’m taking your photo!”

Make sure you’ve reviewed the Essential Photography Accessories list to ensure you have the basics covered.

Wrist Strap

To be a nimble street photographer, you need to get rid of the neck strap and use a wrist strap. This allows you to quickly bring your camera into position and get the shot. Another advantage of a wrist strap is that you can hold the camera next to your body and snap a photo of your subject without being too obvious,

Small Camera Bag

Another way to stay inconspicuous is to use a small bag or even a fanny pack to hold your extra gear. When street shooting, you will not bring multiple lenses with you, so you just need enough room for some spare batteries, an additional memory card, and a lens cloth.

Wildlife Photography Accessories

Wildlife photography is concerned with documenting various types of wildlife (birds and animals) in their natural habitat. Wildlife photographs need to be equipped with long telephoto lenses, and because of the use of high frame rate capture, they need to have a lot of fast, high-capacity memory cards for their camera.

Make sure you’ve reviewed the Essential Photography Accessories list to ensure you have the basics covered.

Fast & High Capacity SD Card

Modern cameras can capture 10-40 frames per second. This means that the memory cards you use will need to store a vast amount of data very quickly. If your memory card is too slow, the camera will have to slow its shutter speed to a crawl while waiting for the images to write to the SD card.

Lens Carrying Strap

Large telephoto lenses are heavy beasts. You should not be carrying your camera and lens with a strap attached to the camera as this will put too much stress on the lens mount. Stress like that can damage your camera or the lens.

When using a large telephoto lens, it’s a far better idea to attach a strap to the lens itself and carry both the lens and camera that way.

Large Camera Bag

Large lenses need larger bags. Look into getting a bag that can carry your telephoto lens, the camera, and maybe one or two other lenses.

Binoculars

When out in the field, you can not solely rely on your camera to spot the wildlife around you. Having a good set of field binoculars is essential to finding and photographing the animals around you,

Portable Hide

Here’s an advanced item. We all know that wild animals are often skittish of people. Using a portable “Hide” is a way to prevent the animals from seeing you and reduce the stress that a human tromping around in their environment causes.

Bug Spray

Some good bug spray will keep you sane while standing in the woodlands at sunset or sunrise.

Bear Spray

Some good bear spray can keep you alive if you are tromping around the woods that are also occupied by bears.

Small/Portable Stool

Nature photography involves a lot of waiting for nature to show up. If you don’t want to stand around or sit on the grass, then get a light, collapsible stool to bring along. Many fold up relatively small, and you can hang them from your camera bag.

Lens Skins

Like the Portable Hide, it’s helpful to obscure your gear when you are out in the field. Moving your camera and huge telephoto lens around can be pretty scary to the birds and animals around you. Covering your telephoto with a bit of camouflage will help.

Beanbag Camera Support

When you are lying down and trying to get an image of a far-off animal, you don’t want to spend extra effort steadying your lens. This is where a beanbag camera support comes in handy. Setting your lens on this support will allow you to keep steady.

Sports Photography Accessories

TBD – Come check again soon, and we’ll have this section filled out.

Travel Photography Accessories

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Maternity, Newborn, Child, and Family Photography Accessories

TBD – Come check again soon, and we’ll have this section filled out.

iPhone Photography Accessories

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If you liked this article, check out more of my educational posts in the Guides section.