Accessories For Portrait Photographers

Once you’ve got your camera and lens choice sorted, there are optional accessories to consider. In addition, if you are shooting professionally, you need to consider having spares of your entire kit. Although this may seem like an unreasonable additional outlay, cameras, lenses and supplementary kit can occasionally fail, and if you are photographing portraits that can’t easily be re-shot, then you could be risking your professional reputation if you don’t have back-ups. In addition, you can have different lenses on each camera body, enabling you to switch between lenses more quickly than if you had to turn your camera off, remove one lens and fit the other.

Camera bags

Camera bags are not just for transporting your kit around, they protect it too. When working outdoors you’ll need to be mindful of the risk of condensation and avoid exposing your camera’s body and lens to extreme changes in temperature, especially when leaving a warm building to go outside in winter. The simplest way to do this is to keep everything inside a good quality bag for long enough that the temperature inside gradually matches that outside.

Computer and editing software

Post-production is an essential part of the portrait photography process. You’ll need a computer that can easily handle the large file sizes created by today’s DSLRs and editing software that will facilitate the final stage in the creation of your portraits.

Memory cards

Memory cards store the image files as you shoot, and can be taken out of the camera in order to move or copy their contents to a computer. The most common types are Secure Digital (SD) and Compact Flash (CF) – the type you need will depend on which camera body you are using.

The cards come in a variety of different capacities and transfer speeds, determining how many image files they can store and how quickly they can transfer the data to your computer, with larger capacities and faster speeds costing more.

If you are shooting Raw files, which contain unprocessed and uncompressed image data, smaller capacity cards will be used up very quickly, whereas JPEG files are compressed and require less space. Top-end camera bodies often have two memory card slots, enabling you to back-up your images as you shoot.

Tripods

If you want to shoot in low light levels with a slower shutter speed while avoiding camera shake, you will benefit from using a tripod. However, your subject will need to stay completely motionless while the shutter is open, otherwise their movements will blur the shot.

Tripods take time to set to the right height and angle and are cumbersome to transport around. Instead, lean on the back of a chair or against a door-frame to support yourself while shooting, or switch to a steadier posture, with elbows close to your body to minimise camera shake. You can also increase your ISO, open your aperture or use external flash in order to enable a faster shutter speed – more…