Photo Accessory News

Here are some tips I discovered when researching this month’s column. One was from my wife who uses this technique all the time—smile! And you know what, people smile back, making you appear friendly and non-threatening. The other was from Michael Archambault, who suggests you “acknowledge that street photography is not perfect.” Or as my grandfather once told me, “If you spend your whole life looking for happiness, it’ll make you miserable.”

A spring shower can interrupt power. A lightning strike can fry your electronics with 300 million volts. And a sudden, severe drop in voltage can burn an electric motor crisper than a bug in a hot skillet. These very real potential disasters can cost you money, time and possibly your precious digital images. Here’s a list of seven devices that might save your bacon.

Low-light photography can be quite a challenge whether you're shooting in the field or indoors in a dim room with available light. Today's quick tutorial with Anthony Crothers is for those of you who are struggling with blurry, grainy photos in situations with less-than-ideal illumination.

My impression of a tabletop tripod was probably like yours—a squat, three-legged support that collapsed down to handily fit inside a camera bag. After unpacking the 17 camera supports that arrived, I had to modify my definition of the genre to include designs that mushroom to roughly 2 feet when fully open—and some with considerable girth and heft. That also meant extending my thinking to models with a center column and multiple leg sections, which might be more correctly termed “mini” tripods. Either way, in contrast to a standard tripod at its full height, the tripods under discussion, when fully open, have a small footprint and should effortlessly fit in tight spaces.

You can now take underwater "selifes" thanks to the new AquaPod Mini from SeaLife. Designed to be an extendable underwater monopod (that can mount to any camera) that allows divers to get close to sea creatures from a safe distance, the AquaPod Mini can also be used as a fun “selfie stick."

This short guide is intended to describe common card performance measurements and explain how these metrics give you the ability to make the most of your D-SLR.