**This recommendation list contains affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy for more information.**
Here are my recommendations for lenses, external hard drives and other camera equipment.
Lens and Gear Recommendations
50mm f/1.8 Lens:
This lens is my TOP choice when looking to add to your lens collection.
It's small, lightweight and affordable. It can revolutionize your capacity to blur the background, and access more light when taking photos indoors.
This lens is especially great for portraits, both indoors and outdoors.
Here is the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens
Here is the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens
Increased Zoom Lens:
If your primary goal is to capture photos from far away [sporting events, wildlife photography; whenever you can't get close to your subject], you may want to consider adding a lens that has an increased ability to zoom.
You will be able to zoom in closer to your subjects while still being far away from them.
Here is a link to the Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6 lens
Here is a link to the Canon 55-250mm f/4-5.6 lens
Macro Lens:
If you're planning to take a lot of close ups of flowers, bugs etc and you want to be able to get very close to your subject and fill the frame with it, you might want to consider a macro lens.
Macro lenses are specifically designed to allow you to get very close to your subject and focus well at those distances.
An added benefit of these lenses is that they are not only for close ups. You can use them as portrait lenses as well.
They won't allow you to open up your aperture as much as an f/1.8 lens will [see 50mm f/1.8 lens above] but they will allow you to go to f/2.8 or f/2.5, depending on the lens. You'll be able to blur the background more and let in more light with a lens like this than you are able to with your current kit lens.
Here is a Nikon macro lens
Here is a link to a Canon macro lens
Lens Hood:
If you're looking to cut down on the sun flare in your images, or if you want to add extra protection to your lens, a lens hood can help you with that.
A lens hood is a plastic or rubber piece that screws on to the end of your lens in order to add protection and to block out sun while you're shooting.
Here is a Nikon lens hood
Every lens has a specific diameter; exp: 58mm or 72mm. This is also knows as it's thread size.
If you're unsure of your lens diameter, look at the circular front of your lens. The measurement should be listed there as a number and a circle with a diagonal slash through it. [That's the diameter symbol.]
Lens hoods are sized to fit a specific lens diameter, so you need to buy a lens hood that fits your lens. Make sure you double check your thread size before buying any lens hood.
Tripod:
A tripod is a three legged stand that you can attach your camera to.
The tripod holds your camera perfectly still and allows you to use slow shutter speeds without introducing your hand's shakiness into the photo.
This enables you to take photos of stationary subjects in low light, such as architecture or landscape photos.
A tripod also makes it easy to set up your camera so you can use the self timer on your camera. This is ideal for taking group shots if no one else is around to take your photo for you.
Here is a good tripod
Keep in mind that if your subjects are moving, a tripod will not eliminate motion blur in your photos.
If you are using too slow of a shutter speed to freeze the motion of your subjects, you will have motion blur in your images regardless of whether you use a tripod or not.
[If this is confusing to you, refer back to the shutter speed section for a refresher.]
Camera Backup Recommendations
External Hard Drives:
External hard drives are the ideal way to back up your images onto a physical, tangible place.
There are lots of good cloud-based storage options online, but for those of you who want to have a physical place where all of your images and videos are backed up on, an external hard drive is what you're looking for!
Here is a 1 TB Toshiba hard drive
The Toshiba hard drive above is ideal for a PC. If you have a Mac and know how to reformat the hard drive to be OSX compatible, you can do this.
However, if your eyes just glazed over reading that and you have a Mac computer, see the next suggestion below.
Here is a 1 TB WD hard drive for Mac
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If there are other types of camera or electronic gear that you want to know about, feel free to let me know!
You can contact me here or email me at hello @ lauraradniecki.com.