Helpful Accessories (Johan)

For this post, I decided to share some of my favorite "low-cost" accessories. I use these items often.

• Spudz Microfiber Lens Cloth--Very useful, ~$5, clip it onto your camera bag and never lose your lens cloth again.
  
• Off-camera hot shoe cord--A great accessory for getting your flash off the camera's hot shoe for interesting effects.
  
• Sto-fen Omni-bounce--Great little diffuser for shoe-mount flashes such as my Canon 580EX II, retails for ~$20.
  
• Remote Shutter Release--Very useful. There are wireless and wired versions for many cameras. Use along with mirror lock-up and a tripod for long exposures.
  
• Reflector--These come in many sizes; I'd recommend a reversible one with gold and silver sides. Reflectors are especially useful for macro shots.
  
• Spare memory card(s)--Cards are so cheap now, there's no excuse for running out of memory while shooting. I recently purchased a SanDisk Ultra II 8GB CF card for $24 at Office Depot.
  

"Spider's Delicacy"
1/200sec. ~ f/16 ~ ISO 200
Equipment: Canon 10D + 100/2.8 Macro + 580EX II + Off-Camera Shoe Cord OC-E3 + Remote Switch RS-80N3 + Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce + Manfrotto 055XPROB
To my mother's horror, this photo was taken in the window jamb of my bedroom. :-)