6 Must have items for a beginner photographer
Hello Chelsey here, When I embarked on my photography journey, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information online. Despite devouring numerous blogs and watching countless YouTube videos, I struggled to find a concise guide outlining the absolute essentials for beginners and how many of these basics were truly necessary. Skip the fluff—let's jump straight into the fundamental must-haves for budding photographers.
Batteries:
First and most important is extra batteries. Your camera comes with one, but go ahead and invest in at least 1 more if you are only using your camera for stills. Videography is a whole different beast and I would suggest in at least 3 more giving you a total of 4. Also, don’t buy the cheap off brand batteries, buy the ones that are made for your camera by the same brand. If you have a canon, these are the batteries I use, and for some reason they have been hard to come by lately.
SD Cards:
Do not make the same mistake, I made, (regretfully more than once) and only buy one 32gb SD card and shoot in raw. Depending on your camera and the type of content your creating you can choose from 32gb to 512gb of storage. The faster the read and write speeds are the better. For my Canon R5 I use these, and my R6 these. I’ve used a ton a SD cards over the years and I’ve found that Lexar, Pro Grade and Delkin are great options.
Hard drives:
External hard drives are a must for photographers, you will need a place to store your digital files that isn’t your computers hard drive. Having large files stored on an external hard drive leaves space on your computers hard drive for editing software. I am long time user of Lacie hard drives, this is my favorite portable drive for travel and out of office use. I use this desktop version as a backup for my portable drives.
50mm 1.8 Lens
When it comes to buying lenses for the beginner photographer, I always suggest going with a 50mm f/1.8.
The 50mm focal length is considered a standard focal length making it versatile for various types of photography including portraits, street photography, product, and some landscapes. It is affordable, versatile, surprisingly shard and super light and compact making it the perfect lens to always have in your bag. If you are a fellow canon mirrorless shooter you can find the Canon RF 50mm f1.8 here.
Camera Strap
There are so many camera straps and accessories on the market but my go to company for camera accessories is Peak Design. The have a wide range of premium well made products that are eco friendly. I own several different versions of their camera strap, as they come in a variety of sizes, this one is my go to when I use larger lenses and this one and this one for smaller lenses.
Editing Software
Last but certainly not least you will need a way to edit those photos, I use Adobe Bridge paired with camera raw which is very similar to Adobe Lightroom. Bridge allows metadata management, batch processing, customizable workspaces and integrates with the Adobe Creative Cloud, making it super easy to open photos directly to camera raw and photoshop.