Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Lenses, Flashes, and Other Toys

Over the years, I have acquired a number of accessories to go with my cameras. Lenses, flashes, a battery grip, light meters, and a number of others.

And I continue to grab accessories.

Some accessories are more essential than others. All of my cameras, for example, included lenses. This is assumed with a point-and-shoot, but it's not a guarantee when dealing with an SLR.  It's very possible to buy camera bodies without included lenses.

Over the years, I've acquired nine or so lenses other than those included with the cameras.  Most of them are standard lenses, but one of them is a Lensbaby.  My lenses feature a variety of focal lengths and aperture settings. And I've been really lucky - I've never paid more than $150 for a lens.

The most common lens accessory is a filter. All of mine have a screw-on filter attached. In most cases, it's a UV filter. They're cheap, necessary, and can help protect the lens from scratching. In addition to the screw-on filters, I also have a Cokin P-Series filter holder and a few filters for it.

Since my favorite thing to shoot is board game components, I end up doing a lot of macro work.  Because of this, I have acquired a set of Macro Tubes. These sit between the lens and the camera body, and are an inexpensive substitute for an expensive macro lens, albeit with a caveat: they let less light through than a macro lens would.  I also have a macro diopter - it's like a cross between a magnifying glass and a screw-on filter. It's ALSO used for macro work, but causes some distortion to the image.

Another key accessory for macro work is a tripod. Without a dedicated macro lens, it's more or less essential. I have one - it's not exceptional, but it does the trick.

When shooting indoors, a flash is critical.  My Vivitar included one, and I used to be pretty good with it. But I'm out of practice.  The Pentax has a pop-up flash built in, but I've added a "real" flash because it has more options. Many more options.  I also have a couple of slave flashes, which are used to add additional light from a different direction than the main flash on the camera.

The Pentax also has a battery grip added - it adds an extra battery, storage for the remote, storage for a spare SD card, and an additional set of controls for the camera (trigger, front and rear dials).

All of these accessories so far are for the K-mount cameras (the Vivitar V2000 and the Pentax K10D).

I've had the other cameras for a much shorter period of time.  When my wife's uncle gave me the Polaroid Land Camera 210, he also gave me his flash.  The difficult part for that one is acquiring flashbulbs.  I've found a few sources here and there, but they get expensive. Old flashbulbs are single-use, you see. It's a matter of use and then discard.

Of the Polaroids I own that use 600 series film, one is the 1980s model which has a built-in flash.  The other needs flashbars added, which I can't find anywhere. They work just like the old flashbulbs - again: single use. It means that the flashbar camera is outdoor use only. Or will be, once the Impossible Project makes a bit more progress with their film.

The only accessories I have for the Komaflex and Graflex camera(s) are a couple of light meters. They're not strictly necessary, but they're helpful. The Komaflex has a standard tripod mount, but the Graflex has a slightly different mount (in terms of size).  Eventually, I'll get a tripod for it, which is fairly important with a camera that you have to focus before film is added.  The Graflex also has a second lens.

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