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Related Items

Books

• Langford's Basic Photography

Equipment

• Canon G10 Camera
• Lastolite Graycard
• Manfrotto 345 Tripod
• Nikon P6000 Camera
• ProMaster 12-in Reflector

Equipment Articles

• New Student Kit

New Photography Student Kit, Enhancements

After you’ve bought for yourself a kit like the one we’ve described in the article on New Photography Student Kit, you might want to add a bit more. There’s plenty more than you can add to your photography equipment. However, if you just want a little more. I have a few minor items you might include to improve your photos without having to spend much more money.

Stability

Although high-end compact digital cameras like the Canon Powershot G10 and the Nikon Coolpix P6000 have been engineered to compensate for the camera shaking slightly when the photographer takes a picture—this is called Image Stabilization on Canon cameras and Vibration Reduction on Nikon cameras—it’s better if the camera isn’t shaking and you don’t use this shake compensation systems. While they do deal with camera shake very nicely, they’re not as good as not using such a system and just mounting the camera on a tripod and not shaking it in the least.

This photograph is of my Canon Powershot G10 again, but includes a small tripod. It’s an extremely sturdy Manfrotto 345 Table Top Tripod Kit. It comes with an extension rod to be able to seat the camera another ten inches higher. To the left is a small light reflector: it’s gold colored on the side shown and silver on the reverse. Underneath it you is gray-card for manually adjusting your white balance. On the reverse side it’s white. It can be used as well as a reflector. Both the gray-card and the reflector have a spring like rim and a nylon surface that allows them to be folded easily. They can then be stored in a small bag to keep them folded: you can see the black bag that holds the reflector siting on top of it. Lastly, if you want to improve your skills in photography, take more photos and get yourself another book that covers the basics, thoroughly.

There are much larger tripods than the table top model shown in the image here. However, when you’re traveling and carrying a large tripod is sometimes too much of a burden, so you won’t take it with you. A small tripod can fit easily in your camera bag and is not a very heavy addition. Even a small tripod positioned on a table or some other item (e.g., a public mail box or trash can) can make a difference in your photos. There are cheaper ones than the one I recommend, but this one is strong and sturdy. With all of your equipment, buy good quality gear that you will continue to use no matter how far you go with your photography.

I own the tripod shown in the picture here: it’s a Manfrotto 345 tripod. It has a pivotal ball head that allows for angling up or down or in any direction, and a lever to lock it tightly in place. With the extension bar you can raise the camera up another ten inches. Just make sure the legs are positioned properly when it becomes too top heavy. If so, put something heavy on the base to keep it from tipping over. With a typical compact digital camera like mine, though, it’s fine without the additional weight.

Reflective

Probably all compact digital cameras has a built-in flash. An external flash would be a good addition, but this is a minor kit upgrade. With the Nikon and Canon cameras I recommended in my previous article (New Photography Student Kit), you can adjust the exposure settings to be able to take pictures in pretty low lighting without the use of a flash. In fact, sometimes the results of taking a photograph without a flash can give a more natural look to your images. Still, making good use of the existing lighting can improve your photographs.

One simple and inexpensive method is to use a reflector to reflect the lights. With a reflector you can have someone hold the reflector at a position and angle to reflect light on the shadowy side of the subject you’re photography. You can also prop the reflect against something near your subject or use a clothes pin to attach it to something like a floor lamp. Use whatever you can find handy to fill in the shadows of your shot. The results will be worth the contortions and the low cost of a reflector disc.

In the photograph you can see a gold colored reflector disc. It has constructed with a spring like rim and a nylon surface. This allows the reflector disc to be folded easily and stored in a small bag to keep them folded and so that it takes less space in your camera bag. You can see the black bag that holds the reflector siting on top of it. It’s about five inches in diameter and weighs only a couple of ounces. The one shown in the photograph is a ProMaster SystemPro 12-inch Reflector Disc. The make larger sizes (e.g., 22 inches and 41 inches in diameter).

Adjusting Color

The light from the sun and light from incandescent lights and light from florescent lights are basically white, but not exactly pure white. The light from the sun is a little yellow, from florescent lights it’s a little blue. When you look at objects that are white but are a tad yellow from the sun, your brain automatically adjust what it sees to compensate for the slight yellowing of the sun. This is called, white Balancing. You may not realize that your brain is doing this, but it is. A good camera will have an automated white-balance feature that will attempt to make this adjustment. However, sometimes it guesses wrong. So, there are some white-balance presets for various light sources: the sun, incandescent lights, etc., as well as deviations from the sunlight such as shade and clouds. However, these are general and common settings. What happens when you’re shooting with a light sources that isn’t exactly the color expected by the presets. For instance, to what do you set the white balance when in a room with an incandescent light overhead and a sunlight from a nearby window? White color is one incandescent bulb versus another? To know for sure, companies like Seikonic make color meters. However, these are expensive.

A cheap method is to use a simple gray-card. Better cameras like the Canon Powershot G10 allow you to manually set the white-balance. It’s pretty simple, but varies depending on the camers. You just take a picture of a gray-card which is place in front of your subject and tell the camera that this photograph is of a gray card (i.e., of something that is eighteen percent gray). Based on this known color value, the camera adjusts the white-balance accordingly.

Summary

On the surface this may not seem like much of an upgrade, but for not an excessive amount of money you can take much better pictures and learn more about photography concepts in the process. The tripod I recommended costs about $90 US—it’s a little pricey for such a small tripod, but it’s a good one that you won’t toss one day. A reflector, depending on the size, can cost from $14 US to $50 US. The gray-card that I’m recommend, the one that’s in my photos is made by Lastolite. It costs about $35 US. That may seem like a lot. I have two comments in response: first, welcome to photography (a comment I can make about any piece of photography equipment that I recommend); second, an electronic color meter costs about a thousand dollars. Again, photographs taken with a tripod can make a big difference in the clarity of your photographs. Using reflectors to fill in light on your subjects, to eliminate shadows can make for more vibrant photos. And photographs that don’t have a sickly blue tone to them because of improper white-balancing, will also make for much better photographs.