10 Things You Should Have In Your Photography Kit

10 Things You Should Have In Your Photography Kit

Have you ever won­dered what equip­ment you need to help you be suc­cess­ful as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er? Well, I’ve put togeth­er 10 Things You Should Have In Your Pho­tog­ra­phy Kit. 

If you’re just begin­ning in pho­tog­ra­phy, or even if you are a more sea­soned pho­tog­ra­ph­er, you may be won­der­ing what you real­ly need in your “kit.” Things that are nec­es­sary, or things you should­n’t waste your mon­ey on. Should you buy the whole “cam­era bun­dle” or just the cam­era? Let me stop here and just say…avoid buy­ing the cam­era bundles! 

And wor­ry no more about mon­ey wast­ed on unnec­es­sary kit, read on for my list of 10 things you should have in your pho­tog­ra­phy kit!

Camera

Num­ber one may seem obvious…A cam­era. You don’t want just any cam­era in your bag; you want a pro­fes­sion­al DSLR or mir­ror­less cam­era body. I am a loy­al Canon user. That’s all I’ve ever owned and all I will ever own, and there are a cou­ple that I reg­u­lar­ly rec­om­mend. First is the  Canon 6D Mark II. It is a full-frame cam­era with incred­i­ble image qual­i­ty, fast focus, and many focus points. I also often tell peo­ple to look at is the Canon Rebel T7. It’s a great starter DSLR. It’s afford­able, easy to use, and has excel­lent image quality. 

If Nikon is the way you want to go, the Nikon D5600 is a great choice. This Nikon offers excep­tion­al qual­i­ty for the price!

Strap

Num­ber 2, a good strap. The strap that comes with your cam­era is usu­al­ly uncom­fort­able. If you find that as well, there are many options out there for you. On my list of must-haves are these super fun cam­era straps…Foto­strap has the most fan­tas­tic cam­era straps. A lot of which are on sale right now. From the Lim­it­ed Edi­tion straps, which are my favorite, to the Design­er straps, they have a huge selec­tion and some­thing for every­one. And a cool thing about this com­pa­ny is not only do they make some rockin’ cam­era straps, but 10% of every pur­chase goes to Fotolan­thropy, a char­i­ty using pho­tog­ra­phy to doc­u­ment peo­ple’s jour­neys through adversity. 

Lens

Num­ber 3 on the 10 things you should have in your pho­tog­ra­phy kit is a lens. I don’t want you to run out and start buy­ing a ton of lens­es, but if you’re going to get seri­ous about pho­tog­ra­phy, you will want to move away from your kit lens fair­ly quick­ly. Kit lens­es aren’t the best lens­es to have, so if you can spend a bit more mon­ey and get a good qual­i­ty lens, it will make all the dif­fer­ence in your photography.

My go-to lens is the Canon 50mm f1.8. I love this lens for por­traits because it allows me to shoot wide open and achieve that gor­geous blur­ry back­ground that I love. I also love that it’s so afford­able. It’s the cheap­est lens in my bag, but the one you will find on my cam­era most of the time! I have a whole blog on lens­es. Click here to check that out and learn more about what lens may be right for you.

Battery

Num­ber 4, an addi­tion­al bat­tery. If you spend long days shoot­ing ses­sions, an addi­tion­al bat­tery is nec­es­sary. When it comes to bat­ter­ies, I sug­gest that you stick with brands spe­cif­ic to your cam­era and not an off-mar­ket battery. 

SD Card

The num­ber 5 item on my list 10 Things You Should Have In Your Pho­tog­ra­phy Kit, is addi­tion­al SD cards. I have quite a few SD cards. I usu­al­ly have 5 with me. I shoot a lot of ses­sions and don’t always upload the pho­tos to my com­put­er right away, so hav­ing a lot of cards is essen­tial. There’s noth­ing worse than run­ning out of space on your card, so either buy a large one or a few to have handy. 

SD Card Case

Num­ber 6, and SD card case. Make sure that you have an SD card case to put all of your cards in. This was a mis­take that I made too many times. I would put my card in the zip­per part of the bag and waste too much time try­ing to find it. I know always keep mine in this lit­tle case for con­ve­nience at I have to say, it has been one of my best purchases.

External Hard Drive

Num­ber 7, an exter­nal hard dri­ve. Even though this does­n’t go in your actu­al “kit”, this actu­al­ly may be the sec­ond most impor­tant thing on my list of 10 things you should have in your pho­tog­ra­phy kit. Back­ing up your pho­tos is so impor­tant! I am neu­rot­ic with this step, as los­ing my pho­tos is a mas­sive fear of mine. As a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, you are cre­at­ing mem­o­ries. Whether they are your own or some­one else’s, you want to ensure they are backed up. I have my pho­tos orga­nized on my com­put­er, exter­nal hard dri­ve, and a cloud service.

Bag

Num­ber 8 on 10 Things You Should Have In Your Pho­tog­ra­phy Kit list is a cam­era bag. You’ve found the per­fect cam­era, you’ve pur­chased the cor­rect lens, you have all of the essen­tial kit…now where do you put it all? Your cam­era bag! 

Cam­era bags are made specif­i­cal­ly to hold and pro­tect your cam­era equip­ment, so make sure that you don’t spend all of the mon­ey on great equip­ment to toss in your hand­bag or back­pack. Invest in a specif­i­cal­ly designed cam­era bag. 

I have the Think Tank Lily Deanne Mez­zo bag, and I love it! It’s sleek, full of pock­ets and big enough for all of my equip­ment. There are plen­ty of cam­era bags out there to choose from. Back­packs, bags, you name it, you can find it. 

Reflector

Num­ber 9 is a reflec­tor. Reflec­tors are great. They are an inex­pen­sive way to manip­u­late light. Reflec­tors are small, portable and you can eas­i­ly use them to bounce light to cre­ate catch­lights and use in a sit­u­a­tion that you want to low­er your ISO.

Cleaning Kit

And last­ly on the 10 Things You Should Have In Your Pho­tog­ra­phy Kit is a clean­ing kit. Main­tain­ing your cam­era, lens­es, and oth­er equip­ment is essen­tial, and a clean­ing kit is a great addi­tion to your cam­era bag. This Altura Pho­to Pro­fes­sion­al Clean­ing Kit has every­thing you need. A microfiber cloth, clean­er bot­tle, lens brush and pen, air blow­er and clean­ing sheets and cloths.

When you’re get­ting your bag togeth­er, remem­ber, just because you have more, bet­ter equip­ment does­n’t mean that your pho­tos will turn out how you want them. Focus on the few must-have pho­tog­ra­phy gear items and under­stand how they work. It does­n’t mat­ter how great the equip­ment is or how much of it you have if you don’t know how to use it.