Amazon Finds for Photographers – Things That Have Made My Life Easier

I’ve always been one to scope out things I never knew I needed, but obviously have to have after I find them on Amazon so I figured it was about time I share my favorite Amazon finds for photographers. This post has all of the things ranging from gear, bags, tools to make photos more creative, things to make working from home more convenient, things that I use in my day to day life, but any other human including photographers could get a good use out of it too and so much more. I’m constantly updating this list with the new things I buy on Amazon for photography that I can’t live without, so check back for updates!

By the wayyyyyy. I have to legally tell you that some of these are affiliate links and I get a lil kickback from Amazon if you buy them. Most of the products on this list actually don’t make me any money, but a few do. This is more about me giving you my favorite things than it is about me making money. Promise. Love you, mean it.

To kick this post off I’m going to keep it strictly photo related, but as you scroll to the bottom you’ll see more of those fun convenience items that you didn’t know you couldn’t live without!

I love me some pretty Kelly Moore, House of Flynn, Rucksack and all the pretty name brand camera bags but once I bought this Amazon Basics camera bag I never looked back.  This bad boy has orange velcro inserts and can fit my 2 Canon 5D Mark IV’s, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 135mm, two flashes and my pocket wizards for OCF in the main part of the bag. I can slide my laptop or an iPad on the backside of the lid/cover. There is a pocket on each side that is perfect for batteries, SD cards, CF cards, business cards. The front pouch is what I use to store a little emergency bag of bandaids, bobby pins, safety pins, zots (more on these later), lens cleaning cloths, prisms and copper tubes. I swear this thing is like Mary Poppins purse, it fits an endless amount of things. I chose to get the one with wheels that converts in to a backpack so that I can roll it around at larger venues, but when I’m working in the mountains or moving around a lot I can throw it on my back and use it that way instead. It also has a complete solid flat bottom on the back AND bottom, so you can set it down or lay it down (or…drop it) and your gear is safe and sound. Bonus: it follows airline regulations for carry on size so you can bring it with you when you travel!

Since I brought this up when I was chatting about my camera bag and it isn’t a word people hear very often, these ZOTS are my favorite hack for getting rings to stand up when I’m doing detail flat lays! My grandma is a scrapbooker and when I first saw her using these I knew I needed them in my camera bag. You can stick them on rings to make them stand up straight, you can use them to stack rings, you can use them to stick down stationary if you’re shooting a detail flat lay outside and theres a little bit of wind, or if you’re photographing a menu on a table at an outdoor reception and can’t get it to stay still. These things are the best. And they’re under $10.

I’m jumping around a little bit here, but I want to make sure I’m showing people options at multiple different price points so stay with me here! I know Canon, Godox, Alien Bee, etc. make some great flash equipment, but I’m not a brand snob when it comes to my flashes and when you have to buy multiple of them for things like second camera bodies and OCF these Yongnuo Wireless flashes are incredible. They’re less than $100 each and comparable to Canon’s equivalent which is $600 per flash. I have 6 of these bad boys and they’re going strong on their third full time wedding season. They definitely like to eat batteries, but more often than not 4AA’s can last me for a 4 hour wedding reception.

Since we’re talking about batteries. This double pack of battery testers (also less than $10 for 2 of them) is a life changer. I can’t tell you how many times I took batteries out of flashes because I wasn’t sure how much power was actually left in them and I was afraid of a flash running out of battery power on an off camera flash stand during the middle of something important, or having the flash slow down from being on low battery and not having my flash fire fast enough during dance spins or sweet little tear wipe aways during the toasts/dances. I literally had an entire jar of batteries in my office that I wasn’t sure how much power was left in and it turns out 80% of them were still close to full. I keep one of these in my camera bag and another at home in my office. Super cheap, super worth it.

Bringing it back to flash equipment here. If you already have a flash or two..or few and you don’t want to switch to a wireless flash system, or you want to add more flashes to your gear list but want to go with a lower cost brand that isn’t wirelessly compatible with the ones you’re currently using I swear by these PocketWizards. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve hooked one of these suckers up to my second shooters camera/flash when they’re using a different brand so we could both trigger the same light stand rather than setting up multiple stands all over the room. These use AAA batteries, but they last forever and sometimes I can use them for 2-3 wedding receptions depending on how much off camera flash I end up using.

Let’s talk flash stands and doohickeys (that’s the formal word, right)! I use Amazon basics flash stands for all of my off camera flash set ups. When I’m using a backdrop for my photo booth I go with a sturdier style stand from Manfroto but these bad boys are super light weight, fold up tiny enough to slide in the inside pocket of my camera bag and are easy to set up and tear down. I also use these triple hot shoe brackets to attach my flash and PocketWizard on to the top of the stand so there are no dangling cords! They just screw right to the top of your flash stands and you can swivel them in any direction easily once your stand is set up so you don’t have to constantly adjust the head of your flash!

Channeling my inner Tina Fey from Baby Mama here but, THISSS ONE IS FOR THE LAAADIIIIESSS. (But don’t worry gentlemen, these Whoosh screen cleaners can be useful for you too). This pack fits perfectly in to my camera bag and I use it for cleaning my lenses more than anything, but they’re super convenient when my makeup smears off on my LCD screen or I get mascara stuck in the eye pieces of my camera from shooting in super cold weather or bawling like a baby during emotional wedding moments. It comes with these wipes and a little microfiber cloth, but I’m not gonna lie sometimes I just use the wipes and then dry it off with whatever shirt/dress I’m wearing because I’m human and why the heck not. I have a bulkier pack of these at my house too and I use them to clean off my iMacs, Macbook Pro and my kiddo’s iPad when he touches the screen after snacking and before washing his dang hands…kids ;).

Since we’re on the subject of keeping things clean I have to have to have to share this little desk vacuum with you all! I think we’re all guilty of enjoying a snack…or 10 while we’re editing away at our desks and this little vacuum cleans crumbs…dust…dog hair all the things right up to keep your space tidy. It even charges with a USB so you can connect it right to your computer. P.S. I’m totally guilty of using this to clean spices off of my kitchen counters and stove top when I go a little too ham pretending I’m Gordon Ramsey while putting spices on food.

Okay so this next one isn’t totally photography related (okay, maybe not at all), but since I’m talking about keeping things clean and I’m sure some of you also have dogs you all neeeeed this alternative to a lint roller called a ChomChom! I have two dogs that are super hairy and ultra shedders so anytime I used a regular lint roller I would have to rip sheet after sheet of that sticky paper off to get pet hair off of my clothes/jackets before heading in to weddings. This thing is sticky paper free and just collects all of the lint/dog hair in a little compartment in the back. I keep one in my car and lint roll myself off before weddings, but I also keep one at home for my couches, bed sheets and sometimes even use it on the stairs when I don’t feel like pulling out my vacuum ha!

Enough about cleaning supplies and let’s talk about things to make your shots more creative! These triangle prisms are create for creating shots with mirrored bottoms or adding rainbow refractions in to the edges of your shots. I love using these when shooting locations don’t have a lot of variety, so I can mix up the kind of shots they receive in their gallery. I’m also obsessed with using my prism when we have an especially blue sky day because it mirrors the sky from the top of the image to the bottom. Most of my clients that order wall art for their home end up choosing images that I created using one of these inexpensive little things so the return on investment has been well worth it (especially since this thing is dirt cheap). Sometimes people also like using the spheres, cubes and rings for these light refracting shots too so if you want to spice it up even more you can buy a set that includes them all!

On that creative note – I’m sure some of you have heard of the “ring of fire” photos, or even seen them and not realized that the golden glowing sun flare was created using this less than $10 gadget, but I love the heck out of this simple copper tube! I use a 2″ tube because I primarily make these shots with my 35mm lens, but if you prefer shooting on an 85mm or longer focal length you’ll want to go a little bigger. You can buy these at your local hardware store, but if you’re anything like me then clicking “buy now” on Amazon is a lot easier than getting lost in Home Depot searching for copper piping. If you have no idea what kind of images I’m referring to you can check out some of my favorites using this during Jess and Angel’s sunrise engagement session at Lost Gulch!

Time to switch gears back to some actual camera gear (see what I did there?). This video light has been super handy for things like sparkler send offs, first dances, star photos, night photos outside of venues, sunrise elopements that begin before the sun and so much more. Since I shoot with the Canon 5D Mark IV it rarely has issues focusing in low light situations, which is when something like this can really save your butt – but I love using this when there is any fast movement, like a couple running through a sparkler tunnel where I want to only use off camera flash, or no flash at all because it makes focusing that much faster and easier. It’s also great for adding light at the right Kelvin temperature for just a few seconds when you’re creating long exposure photos with the stars and don’t want to fiddle around with a head lamp. Before I was using this I would hold my iPhone in my hand with the flashlight on which was obviously less than ideal!

Want to wow the heck out of your clients and deliver their sneak preview during dinner, or have your second shooter upload a few files on your long drive home so you aren’t editing a sneak peek at midnight when your eyes and brain have officially stopped working? This iPhone SD/CF card reader allows you to grab a few RAW files from your cards and quickly edit them in Lightroom mobile on your iPhone or iPad. My camera have wifi capability for image transfers, but this bad boy is way faster. I didn’t forget about you Android users… they make an Android SD card reader too!

Want to take that on site sneak preview up a notch? Fujifilm makes a mobile compatible printer where you can print a few little polaroids of the images you edit in Lightroom mobile so you have something tangible to hand your couples before their wedding day is even over!

Now that we’ve spent a good amount of time looking at the fun stuff I want to share something that’s a little less exciting, but just as necessary. It’s so super easy to get dehydrated on a wedding day and forget to drink enough water (or worry about having a place or the time to run to a bathroom if you drink *too* much water). A lot of people talk about the powder you can mix in to drinks to keep your hydration level up, but sometimes we don’t have a water bottle around or don’t want to fiddle with dumping powder in to our drinks and chugging them quickly to get hydrated. These Clif Blok chews are a game changer – they make you feel hydrated, they help your body absorb more of the fluid that you do drink and they even have some that come with caffeine if you need that extra pep towards the end of the day, but don’t want to pound a cup of coffee!

I’ll go ahead and wrap this post up with that for now. Stay healthy, stay hydrated, happy shooting and make sure to keep checking back and I’ll keep updating this post with other helpful Amazon finds for photographers! If you have questions about anything specific, or want to see more of my Amazon photography hacks just pop a comment below and I’ll get you going in the right direction!