Do you have a Battery Grip accessory for your DSLR?

A couple of years ago I wrote about my experience of buying a battery grip for my DSLR – while it added bulk and weight to my camera – I did find it had some benefits.

However two years later I have to say that I don’t really use it that often.

The only real times I’ve pulled it out have been on days that I know I’ve got to take a lot of images (weddings mainly). Otherwise It stays at home.

I’m interested to hear what others think – do you have a battery grip for your DSLR? If so – do you actually use it much?

Have you ever had a memory card fail on you? You’ve spent some time photographing an occassion, you’ve done your best and you’re excited about getting the images onto your screen and checking them out. You plug in your memory card and import your photos only to find half of them corrupt! or, even worse there are NO images on the memory card!

I asked the guys over at DigitalRev.com to help me out with a test that I wanted to run – we took two memory cards, a more expensive “well known” brand and a more budget “lesser known” branded CF card and ran them up in real world conditions along side each other to see how they performed.

First, I took the aData card along with me to a night at the Jazz Cafe to photograph a soul singer for Blues&Soul magazine. I wanted to get the job done and couldn’t afford to have any issues, so I figured that with this new card I’d have no trouble. I popped the card into my camera before the gig and formatted it a couple of times, took a few shots and formatted it again. I photographed the gig, checking my display from time to time to see that the images were recording OK and that my focus was as on as a 3″ screen will tell me. Arriving home, I imported the images into Lightroom from the new memory card that I was using and this is what I found…

In this post, Steve Berardi from PhotoNaturalist talks about the problems of having too much camera gear, and what you can do to minimise your gear.

Image by Claudio Matsuoka

When you first got into photography, you probably started out pretty simple. Maybe you started with an advanced point and shoot camera or an SLR with the kit lens. Photography seemed so simple back then, didn’t it?

Then, as your interest grew, you started buying more and more gear, until all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you found yourself surrounded by mountains of camera gear: lenses, filters, flashes, memory cards, cleaning kits, bags, camera bodies, lens hoods, tripods, ballheads, panheads, levels, tripod collars, camera straps, card readers, remote shutter releases, and the list goes on

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The Digital Camera has a number of natural predators – things that in just a few seconds could snuff out it’s life and render you camera-less. Learn to identify your camera’s predators and take a few simple precautions and exercise a little care and you can keep your camera operating at it’s potential for years to come (well at least until it’s time for an upgrade). You really can never do enough digital camera maintenance.

Here are 7 natural predators of the digital camera and how to avoid them:

Photo by ccdoh1

1. Sunscreen and Insect Repellent

It is important to protect yourself from the elements of sun and insect bites when shooting outdoors, however some of the things that you’ll use to do it can cause your camera harm. Sunscreen is generally oily and insect repellent often contains chemicals that you wouldn’t want to get in touch with the more delicate parts of your camera.

The way to limit the impact that these things have on your camera is pretty obvious and largely involves keeping those parts of your body that come into contact with these things clean. Wash your hands in fresh water after applying sunscreen and repellent and you’ll go a long way to keeping your camera clean. If you do get your camera greasy make sure you clean it off as quickly as you can.

Lastly – don’t fall into the temptation of putting sunscreen and repellent into your camera bag. I know it’s tempting so that you don’t have to carry another bag – but it’s really not worth the risk as a leak could end your camera’s life. If you do travel with them together make sure you have a sealed bag for the liquids.

Photo by Burps Liberty

2. Sand

There is nothing that frightens me more than the thought of sand getting into my camera. Cameras have moving parts and to get something as gritty and abrasive as sand into them can quickly put your camera out of action or at least damage it so that you end up with scratches through it.

Ultimately the only protection against sand is not taking your camera to sandy places. Of course this is not particularly feasible and you’ll need to do what you can to keep sand and your camera separate.

Sealable bags are great to travel with, cleaning brushes to get those stray grains off your camera can be useful and cleaning clothes are helpful.

Always be particularly aware of your surrounds and things like wind or people kicking balls or throwing Frisbees when you’re changing lenses, memory cards and batteries as these are high risk moments that sand just loves to swoop in. Also – learn to think ahead about what lens you might need so that you can change it inside in a more stable environment before hitting the beach.

Mamiya, famous for their venerable range of medium format cameras, has announced the release of two new lines of medium format DSLRs.   With megapixel counts between 22MP and 56MP, the four new cameras are at the leading edge in the medium format arena.

While hard and fast stats have not been released, and while the press release last week is heavy on information about new lenses, it is exciting to see Maymiya bringing more options to the medium format market.

While the initial prices for even the DM22 and DM28 lower range cameras will likely be in the multiple thousand dollar range, Mamiya still describes them as, “priced at extremely attractive points.”

Which brings me to a question for our readers; For camera body alone, when does a medium format camera like those from …