Photo Accessory Reviews

Fellow photographers, we were blessed with a bumper crop of cool new stuff in 2024. I'm including lenses and software in this roundup, but not cameras. Here are 13 of the absolutely best products I had a chance to play with last year. I snuck in a mildly controversial number 14 at the end because I couldn't resist.

So what's holding you back from giving macro photography a try? In many cases it's the lack of a costly, specialized lens offering a 1:1 reproduction ratio. If this sounds familiar you're in for a surprise because today's 10-minute lesson from the Hamed Photography YouTube channel demonstrates how to capture stunning images of tiny subjects with affordable accessories and a few easy-to-master shooting techniques.

Put light where you need it. BioLite headlamps are affordable, comfortable and extremely well-made. As a photographer you'll find them an indispensable nighttime companion. And it you ever have to change a tire on a dark road, search at midnight for a doggo that wandered off, or face any emergency that includes a loss of power, you need a headlamp.

You know a tool is hyper-useful when you recognize its potential with little or no explanation. Perception depends of frame of reference, and photographers are quick to imagine how certain items mesh with their image-making work habits. Foil windshield visors become ad hoc reflectors, for instance, wooden boxes become props and discarded sunglasses translate into creative filters.

Here's a trio of photo accessories that you may find indispensable once you comprehend the logic that conceived them.

You stumble into your favorite Starbucks half-awake as you do every morning and WHAM! There's Elvis standing at the end of the counter — fringed shirt, sequined guitar strap and all. You do a quick draw from your iPhone holster while The King patiently waits for his venti peanut butter banana flat white with an extra three pumps of funnel cake syrup, but — damn! — the battery is dead. What do you do? You're missing your chance to join the annals of consumer photojournalism and a shot at certain Instagram history. That's about a zillion Likes being blown to tarnation.

Most experienced photographers rarely shoot without a lens hood for several important reasons, whether they're photographing indoors or out. These affordable accessories not only protect the front element of a lens from damage, but they also improve image quality in a number of ways.