Other than their desire to create, what do photographers and musicians have in common? A love for gear. Regardless of how long you’ve been a photographer, there’s always more gear you could get. Unfortunately, there’s a fine line between buying the essential gear and buying so much gear that you have a problem. To learn about the most common photography gear out there, we put together a list of the essential camera gear for all photographers below.
Various lenses
Arguably the most enjoyable (and expensive) types of camera equipment to experiment with are the lenses. The following statement might be blasphemous in the photography world—you really only need three lenses: a prime, a wide angle, and a zoom lens. We just broke a lot of hearts but also saved you a lot of money. Sometimes heartbreak is for the best. You’re welcome.
Extras upon extras
Every photographer should have several “extras” in their arsenal, and no, we’re not talking about lenses (nice try). You do need, however, extra memory cards and batteries. Nothing’s worse than seeing a perfect image, getting ready to take the shot, and you realize your memory card’s full or the battery is dead. What’s more embarrassing is when you don’t have a spare battery or SD card because you spent the money on the lens that’s sitting at home.
An external flash
Lighting is one of the tools that any photographer can use to set their work apart from others. Whether you’re employing background lighting, split lighting, side lighting, or any other lighting method, you should have an external flash. By implementing the various types of photography lighting, your image can go from basic to totally unique. In fact, lighting is one of the hardest elements to recreate, unlike shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and white balance.
No camera kit is complete without a tripod
Last but not least, you knew it was coming (hopefully)—a tripod. Every photographer needs a solid tripod and tripod head. Tripods are essential when you want to take portraits, landscape shots, and of course any time you want a long exposure. If you’re using slower shutter speeds, a tripod is nonnegotiable because, for the duration of that shot, your camera cannot move. Now we know tripods can get crazy expensive, so if you want to save a little cash, consider buying used tripods and heads.
Of course, there’s plenty of other essential camera gear for all photographers like a dependable bag, a cleaning kit, and an external hard drive for all those RAW photos. But if we’re being honest, you came here to try and justify your lens addiction––sorry, you really only need those three.
