If you shoot low down, maybe for landscapes or createive atchitecture shots, so see through your camera,\u00a0you’ll either have to lie fly on the floor or guess your compoisition. This is where your “angle finder” comes into play. It allows you to look “down” through your camera – so you don’t have to get quite so low. It saves your back, knees and I find it makes me more creative.<\/p>\n
Really useful for people doing exposures on tripods – the act of pressing the shutter will cause a little wobble on your camera, blurry shots result. So using a cable is one solution – allowing you to press a button on a lead rather than touching the camera. Ideal for landscape<\/a> and architecture in the day, and pretty much anything at night. There are affordable “intervalometers” now available which let you do many timed “things”, e.g. wait 1 minute then take 5 photos, each one second apart, each being 5 seconds…. that’s is now do-able for about \u00a320!<\/p>\n One of the only filters you can’t “fake” in photoshop, the polariser changes the light before it hits the camera – the physics of how it changes isn’t really that important, but it affects reflections. Cars become a richer and less reflective, you can see straight through water to the river bed, reflections on food can be changed and blue skies go REALLY dark!<\/p>\n Get a “circular<\/strong>” polariser if you are shooting digital – they work with the Auto Focus systems better apparently.<\/p>\n Do you like photos with dramatic skies?<\/p>\n Pretty much every landscape photographer<\/a> uses ND Grad Filters – the ND stands for “neutral density. That just means they don’t change the colours in your photo – it doesn’t make it warmer, cooler or purple!<\/p>\n The “Grad<\/strong>” bit means that they change from “clear” to “dark” gradually – so the top bit is dark, you put that over the sky. The bottom bit is clear, you put that over the land.<\/p>\n To use these you will need to buy:-<\/p>\n Tripods are used to reduce motion blur on your photos – soft, blurry shots happen when the shutter speeds get longer – typically in\u00a0lower light or indoors.<\/p>\n SO we use tripods to keep the camera perfectly still whilst taking the shot.<\/p>\n But not only that – tripods also force you to take time, to compose the shot more carefully, think more about the photo, take shots lower down, use smaller apertures…. it’s far more than “just reducing blur”.<\/p>\n There are a few different head types for your tripod – the “tripod” are the “legs”, the head is the thing you put your camera<\/a> on and move around.<\/p>\n Many use 3-way heads, which have 3 distinct levers to tweak and move around to compose your work.<\/p>\n I’ve always found these time consuming and restrictive – especially when the sun is setting and you have seconds to shoot before the sun goes down.<\/p>\n Ball heads have one “lock” knob\/switch which you slacken off – the camera then becomes loose and you can move it to any angle you like. Portrait, landscape, pointing up or down, tilted…. you name it, you can do it. All this time you look through your camera and compose the shot.<\/p>\n Once you’re happy you just need to tighten that one switch and you’re done. It’s very very quick and easy compared to the alternative.<\/p>\n If you are curious about adding flash to photos but are on a budget, these are idea.<\/p>\n There are 2 choices of flash:-<\/p>\n If you are using manual off camera flashes, then got just \u00a310 get a 603 trigger – these “talk” to the flash and tell it to “flash” when you take a photo. The flash can be 100m away and it still flashes!<\/p>\n Pointing your flash straight at a person is a sin – it makes them look terrible! So there are hundreds of “modifiers” available, from humble “stofen diffusers”, gary fong light spheres and little “snoots”.<\/p>\n Flash Benders are a square of vinyl with wire inside – and velcro to strap it to your flash head.<\/p>\n These can be used in so many ways – on camera you can use them as spot lights, diffusers, flags etc. Really handy. Off camera, get one on each flash to stop unwanted light entering the camera, creating spots of light on backgrounds etc. etc.<\/p>\n3 – Polarising Filter – \u00a320- \u00a3200<\/h1>\n
4 – ND Grad Filters<\/h1>\n
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5 – Tripod – \u00a350 – \u00a31000<\/h1>\n
6 – Ball Head – \u00a370 – \u00a31000<\/h1>\n
7 – Yongnuo Flashes and Triggers – \u00a310 – \u00a3100<\/h1>\n
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8 – Flash Bender – \u00a312 – \u00a330<\/h1>\n
9 – Flash Gels – \u00a35-\u00a320<\/h1>\n