P#9 Q5B: Two Pieces Of Photography Equipment You Shouldn't Leave Home Without

Flash It

Brenda Tharp: One of the must-have pieces of photography equipment that I would suggest bringing is an accessory flash.

A lot of cameras have the pop-up flashes. Those are fine if you're using it to fill in the shadows on someone's face and they are no more than about 10 feet away from you. If anything is farther away than 10 feet and you need to have a little bit more light to put a catch light in the person's eye or the animals eye, then an accessory flash is really helpful.

A final key piece of photography equipment is the tripod. So many people say, "Oh, my gosh. When I travel, I hate bringing a tripod. I hate walking around the village with it. On the other hand, I can't do any low light photography because I don't have a tripod. Sunrises and sunsets are out. I can't shoot twilight because I don't have a tripod. What do I do?"

One thing you can think about is getting a very lightweight travel tripod so that when you absolutely need one, you've got something there. There are some great, sturdy, lightweight travel tripods on the market.

You want to make sure you get a tripod that handles the weight of your camera and the longest lens that you would use on that setup for traveling. If it's a 15-pound combination of lens and camera, your tripod needs to be able to handle 15 pounds. Otherwise, it's going to be too wobbly.

Gorillapod is a really neat tripod that has legs that twist and wrap around a wrought-iron railing or the fence. You can wrap them around tree branches. You can support them on the top of a church pew. They're really terrific.

You're limited because you obviously can't use it like you would a regular tripod. You can, however, use it in situations where you might have a bridge top where you can't rest the entire tripod on it. You could wrap it around and secure the camera lens to the actual railing on the bridge to perhaps get a picture that you wanted.

In Conclusion

So, what photography equipment must you absolutely bring when you travel? According to Brenda, you need to make sure, at the very least, you bring your camera, a couple of lenses, an accessory flash and a tripod. That's really traveling light!