Best Camera Accessories for Photographers

Where do you start with camera accessories? This is the question I hope to help you solve.

Most camera accessories aren’t required for taking good photos. They help you achieve creative solutions and learn new photography tips and tricks. Here are the camera accessories we can’t live without, and the ones we plan to invest in.

Peak Design Tech pouch

Since using the Peak Design Tech Pouch, my photography accessories have never been more organized. The origami-style pockets are magical and are able to hold a wire variety of items. I’ve been able to fit plenty of cables, small headphones, battery packs, small filter bags, chargers and more.

The outside design is really nice, too. It’s water-resistant, which is nice feature for any bag where you are storing various type of valuables and electronics. Plus, the material and zippers are all top-notch.

One feature that is pretty nice is the cable pass-through. You can use that to help keep your phone or other small accessory charged.

As a photographer, this is really a must-have in your bag to keep yourself organized. See more about it in detail at my Peak Design Tech Pouch review.

Peak Design Field Pouch

I really like bags. The Peak Design Field Pouch is a bag that fits inside another bag. You can carry it by itself, but I think it’s a little too small to do that. When you have a lot of loose items, the field pouch is a perfect solution.

You can keep your cleaning cloths, notepads, filters and more in here. When you’re not on a photo shoot, you can fit hard drives, cables small headphones and more!

Secure Pixel Pocket Rocket

If you are like me, you have a lot of SD cards floating around. I’ve never been good at organizing my SD cards, and I’m lucky because I’ve never had any major issues, either.

Losing a card or having one break in my bag isn’t something that I’m interested in! Luckily, the pixel pocket rocket that I got will really help keep my SD cards organized.

There is not a ton of protection, so I would make sure to keep this in a safe place where it won’t roll around or get crushed.

Filter Hive Mini

I’m not huge on filter photography, but I do have several filters that I’ve collected over the years to help with video or long exposures.

I have the Hive mini from Think Tank Photo, and it’s been a great place to stash away all of my filters. I keep 1 filter in each little slot. Staggering them is a good idea, in the event that something heavy falls on the case, the glass inside should be safe.

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The back of the filter case has a hard(ish) material to give everything a little more structure.

The case should fit most filters and even filters up to 100 x 100mm.

Cable Management™ 20 V2.0

Depending on the amount of cables you need, a cable management bag might be a good idea. This cable storage bag from Think Tank Photo is low frills, yet practical.

You can see what is inside because of the clear see-through window. It includes 3 bungee ties, that will help wrangle up some of those longer cables.

I already own a good amount of small accessory bags for day-to-day cable storage. I’ve been using this cable management bag more for long term storage for my extra cables that I don’t use too often.

SanDisk Extreme Pro 64GB SD Card

This SD card from SanDisk is an excellent memory card. We use this memory card in all of our cameras. 64GB is a great storage capacity and will last you through several days of capturing photos and videos. In one of our newest cameras, the Sony A7 III, this card is dedicated to the second card slot and often used as a backup for JPGs.

Sometimes, it gets promoted to the primary card slot depending on the day. We’ve noticed that in most applications, this memory card won’t slow you down when shooting RAW burst mode or 4K videos. If you’re going on a long trip and don’t have a travel storage backup system, a few of these cards will be great and last you for most or all of your trip!

SanDisk 32GB Ultra Class 10 SD Card

A memory card is an important asset for any digital camera. Where would all of your travel photos go without a memory card?? Fun fact: Dan actually forgot a memory card once during a photo walk. Since then, he’s never forgotten a memory card again. You can never have too many memory cards.

This 32GB SD card from SanDisk is a great backup. It’s great to have in your bag if you fill up your primary card, need to lend a memory card to a friend or your main SD card fails. With this class 10 memory card, you can transfer files quickly, but we wouldn’t recommend using it for shooting 4k video or burst mode with uncompressed RAW files.

Lens Cleaning Pen

I carry a lens cleaning pen with me almost all the time. The cleaning pen stays in my bag and pretty much never leaves its pocket. Once in a while, there’s a stubborn piece of dust on my lens or a filter that I want to clean. During those cases, I’m glad I carry a lens cleaning pen.

Rode VideoMicro

The Rode VideoMicro is a microphone that sits on top of your camera using the cold shoe. It’s not as powerful as a shotgun mic but provides high-quality ambient sound for video. I use this at all times when I’m recording audio.

Rode smartLav+

The Rode smartLav+ is an affordable option for a lav mic. There’s no remote option, and the cable is too short to plug into your camera. You use this lav mic by passing the audio through your phone. I carry a spare phone almost exclusively for using this lav mic.

Sirui T-025sk Travel Tripod

I love this Sirui tripod. The model number makes no sense, but the awesomeness of the tripod makes up for it. It folds up into a small package and extends to about chest height. It’s one of the most affordable carbon fiber tripods that you can get.

Samsung T5 SSD Hard Drive

The Samsung T5 SSD is an affordable way to expand your storage options. If you shoot lots of photos and videos, these drives are useful for extending your local hard drive space. If you need to edit off this drive, it’s fast enough to edit photos and videos. I use this drive to edit all of my videos.

Giottos Rocket Blower

I rarely clean my camera sensor with sensor swabs. Instead, I always carry a rocket blower to help remove any stray dust from my camera, lens and camera sensor. My rocket blower has been incredibly helpful to keep my equipment clean and dust free.

Microfiber Cloth

A microfiber cloth comes with almost every electronic device that you buy. I always hold on to them because you can never have enough. Whenever you need one, you can never find one! Because of this, I try to have a few randomly stashed in camera bag pockets and tech bags. They are useful for removing and smudges on your lens.

If you’ve now gotten some good ideas of camera accessories you want to test out, then you’re ready to expand your repertoire of where and when you can take photos.

Interested in Backing up your photos?

Next, check out why you should back up photos with Backblaze if you don’t want to lose anything, and how Amazon Prime can be a great tool for travel photographers.

Do you have a lot of awesome photography to share? See our list of picks for creating a photography portfolio online.