My Top 5 Landscape Photography Accessories

1. Memory Cards

Your photos are stored directly to your memory cards when you press the shutter button, so I’m sure that everyone is using only the best to protect their image files. I know some cards can be more expensive but I absolutely believe that it is money well spent. We spend money on camera gear and we go to great efforts to travel to amazing places to get great photos. The last thing you want is to lose all of those great photos to a corupt card. My personal preferenc is always Sandisk cards unless using XQD cards, then I go for Sony. I have used Sandisk for over 10 years and I have only ever had two cards fail and with the recovery software supplied by Sandisk, it wasn’t an issue. I also recommend that if you camera has a second card slot available, set it to backup, just in case.

3. Ballhead

When you buy your first tripos, odds are that you won’t spend a lot of money and you will get some type of tripod head with it. Even when you buy a more expensive tripod it may come with a tripod head but when you splash out on a much higher end tripod, generally the tripod head is something that you purchase seperate. This gives you the opportunity to select the tripod head that you find the most comfortable and user friendly one for you. I personally prefer to use a ball head. The brand I use is Really Rigbht Stuff and it is of the very highest quality. Again, this ball head is more expensive than some other brands but it is worth the extra money. l find ball heads very easy to use and very light weight. This might not be the choice for everyone but I again recommend that you do your own research and visit camera stores to get some hands on with the different options.

5. Graduated/ND Filters

Filters are a great tool to have in your camera bag as a landscape photographer. I always have atleast a set of Neutral Density Filters in my bag. I don’t use the graduated filters so much these dasys as I find that the dynamic range of my camera has been improved so much over the years that for the most part I can get all of the detail I need with a single shot and for the odd ocaision that I can’t, I find bracketting to be a better option for me. ND filters on the other hand are what I use all of the time. I use these filters to manipulate my exposure times in order to get the look and feel from the image that I’m after. I highly recommend that you put a set of filters in you bag. There are many brands that you can use, I personally use Lee Filters and I have been using them for 8 years or so. Lee Fitlers are a high quality product but as I said, there are many other great quality brands. I would definitely steer clear of the cheap brands as they tend to give terrible colour casts and cause you to lose clarity in your image files.

Conclusion

Well that’s my two cents. There are of course many other accessories that I use and that I would recommend but based on the title of this post, I only wanted to share my top 5 today. Camera accessories are the be all and end all when it comes to taking great photos, but they do come in handy when you need them most. I’m sure if I gave your $5000 right now, you could easily go out and spend it very quickly on camera accessories. I encourage you to spend those dollars wisely and when it comes to buying your next piece of camera equipment, take your time, do your research and read customer reviews. I’m sure you only want to best the best gear to use as you travel along this photography journey.