13 Must-Have Photography Accessories When Shooting A Wedding
As a wedding photographer, you need to have the right photography accessories that will help you capture beautiful shots. If you are new to wedding photography, you won’t know about all the camera gear you need to own. In this article, I will list the 13 useful accessories that you must consider investing in for shooting weddings.
13 Essential Wedding Photography Accessories 😎
1. Flash 📸
Flash is the most essential accessory that you need for shooting weddings. You need to invest in 3 to 4 flashes if you are going to take up wedding photography as your profession. Invest in high-quality flashes.
If you go for the cheap ones, you may not get the right colors of light. It may create an unnecessary color cast on your subjects. You may end up spending a good amount of time removing these color casts during editing.
2. Light Diffuser
You cannot use the light coming from the artificial light source (flash or continuous lights) directly on your subject. It will create uninteresting shadows.
You must always try to get a soft light on the subject. So, you must invest in appropriate light diffusers for your flashes and continuous lights.
3. Tripod.
Tripod is another essential accessory for a wedding photographer. You can select between an aluminum or carbon fiber tripod. Go for a carbon fiber tripod if you want to reduce the weight.
You can get different types of tripod heads in the market. The ball head and pan & tilt head are some of the best tripod head options for wedding photographers.
4. Light Stand
When you use multiple flashes or continuous lights, you cannot mount it on top of the camera hot shoe. You need to use a light stand. Invest in a high-quality light stand that you can use many times for many years.
5. High-Speed Memory Cards
It is a bad idea to carry a single memory card for shooting weddings, even if it is a high-capacity one. You will be using a high-end DSLR or mirrorless camera for shooting weddings. Such cameras will come with dual memory card slots. I strongly recommend using both of these slots for your photo storage.
You can keep one memory card as the master and create a duplicate copy of the image in the other. Thus, even if the images in one card go bad or corrupted, you can quickly get them back from your backup memory card. Always go for high-speed memory cards. It will help to ensure that the photo shoot is carried out without any issues.
6. Batteries 🔋
Cameras, flashes, and continuous lights require power. When you are shooting a wedding, you can’t fully rely on one set of batteries for your camera gear, even if they are fully charged. You must carry some spare batteries that you can use if the main battery gets exhausted.
I don’t recommend buying cheap third-party batteries. Go for the batteries recommended by the camera gear manufacturer.
7. Camera Straps
Your hands will start to ache if you handhold the camera all the time. You can use the camera strap that comes along with the camera body. If you are using multiple cameras and lenses, you can consider investing in camera harnesses that are capable of holding multiple cameras and lenses. Thus, switching between the camera and the lenses will be easy for you.
8. Wireless Flash Triggers
You can’t rely on a single light source for capturing beautiful wedding images. You need to have a 2-point or 3-point lighting system, at least for your wedding shoots. If you are using flashes, then you need to employ 2 or 3 flashes triggering simultaneously.
You need to keep these flashes at some distance from the camera and the subjects. So, you will need a wireless trigger to trigger these flashes. Get some high-quality wireless flash triggers that can be communicated with your flashes.
9. Monopod
If you are on the move, carrying a tripod will be tough. So, it is a good idea to use a monopod in this situation.
A monopod will help you to capture shake-free images. You can easily move around with your camera if you mount it in a monopod.
10. Clamps
Clamps are another important tool that will help you mount your camera in different places.
Consider carrying 4-5 clamps with you for the shoot. You can use it to mount your camera as well as lights.
11. Camera & Lens Cleaning Kit
Always carry the camera and lens cleaning kit with you when you are going to shoot weddings. Now, you might be thinking, why would someone wants to clean the camera during the wedding shot.
If there are some fingerprints or dust in the camera lens that can affect the quality of the image, then you need to remove it immediately, even if it is in between the shoot. Otherwise, you may end up spending more time in front of the computer to clear these defects. The camera lens cleaning kit won’t be heavy. So, you can keep it in your camera bag.
12. Extension Boxes & Cables
If you are using the power grid instead of a battery for your lighting, then it is a good idea to carry some extension boxes and power cables with you. Sometimes, the power socket will be at a farther place in the marriage area.
The actual length of the power cable of the continuous lights may not be long enough to reach this socket. So, you need to use the power extension cables to get the power to the light sources.
13. Camera Bag
When you are going for a wedding shoot, you need to ensure to carry all the necessary camera gear. So, you will need a camera bag that can accommodate all your gear.
Before buying a camera bag, list out all the gear that you will be carrying for the wedding. It will help you to decide the capacity of the camera bag. There are many camera bag manufacturers out there. You can go for any high-quality camera bag that serves your purpose.
📖 READ MORE 👉🏻 : How to Select the Perfect Wedding Photographer?
Conclusion
Now you know the must-have photography accessories you need to invest in for wedding shoots. There are many wedding photographers out there since the wedding is one of the main ways of generating income from photography. So, owning these photography accessories alone will not help you get good clients.
You must be able to offer your customers something different and pleasing. For example, the group of wedding photographers at Sound Originals offer two types of color-graded images to the customers, classic and rustic. So, you must also try to provide something unique to your customers that your customer will enjoy.
