My husband is a photography enthusiast, which means I am well aware of the extensive and complicated world of camera accessories. He started out with a purist approach, using only his DSLR’s actual clicks and not editing beyond the basics to get his desired output, but that was before he got a good camera smartphone and the ease of usage added a new dimension to his process. Smartphone camera has become the principal factor in choosing our desired phone, with the functionalities the phone provides being taken for granted over the ever-growing need to capture, document, and share our lives with the world. Whether your passion is to click photos of your food, taking a selfie, documenting your travel, macro photography or even portrait photos, the accessories in this collection are the boost your setup needs to give your photos that professional edge!
The ShiftCam ProGrip comes with a universal gripping mechanism that allows you to clip any smartphone onto it and turn it into a pro-shooter. It features a Bluetooth shutter button that’s perfectly positioned so that you can click images with your index finger, and a grip that’s so inviting, you’re more likely to focus on photography rather than accidentally dropping your phone (it’s a real concern, believe me). The grip comes with a swivel joint that allows you to flip the phone over into portrait mode while you’re holding it in landscape, giving you varying degrees of freedom and the ability to shoot in a way that’s comfortable to you. Now that we’ve covered the basic stuff, let’s get to why the ShiftCam ProGrip stands out from brands like Pictar or Moment when it comes to providing the best DSLR-like experience.
Styled like most light-boxes, Iaroslav Neliubov’s Photon is a 5-sided cube that you can photograph products in. A canvas/backdrop hangs from the panel at the back to the base, giving you a clean background for your products – but what’s really exciting is the Photon’s light-setup. The Photon’s remaining panels are, in fact, entirely made up of LEDs from top to bottom covered with a frosted diffuser-surface. These LEDs, connected to a centrally-controlled source, can be triggered to give you drop-down and side-lighting. Depending on your product, its shape, size, orientation, and the quality of its surfaces, you can trigger different combination of light blocks, creating dynamic or uniformed lighting that mimics the versatility of having an entire light setup with 5-6 lamps. You can save lighting presets or access light presets from Photon’s library, and even animate the light blocks to really make product photography interesting!
Al Morrow & VERT Design’s BIGSOFTI comes with a universal clip that fits all leading smartphone, tablet and laptop brands. It also has a shoe mount with 1/4″-20 thread to fit all cameras, tripods and light stands. And lastly, if your needs revolve around webinars and zoom calls, then this handy light also has a 3M Adhesive Mount for computer monitors and other general surfaces. You won’t need two hands to hold your device because the light only weighs 75 grams which makes it portable without strain. Control your lighting angle by up to 45 degrees with the rotating barrel connector built into all accessory mounts. BIGSOFTI runs for 95 minutes at maximum brightness in one charge – portable AND powerful! Good lighting not only makes for the best selfies (hello quarantine dating) but it also makes you and your content look more professional. Be it for personal needs like a FaceTime/Zoom calls or for your videos YouTube/TikTok/Instagram; if they look better and you go viral, you will be thankful to BIGSOFTI!
Meet the Color Match Card… an innocuous-looking card with a grid of colored swatches and a hollow cutout in the middle. All you do is place the card on an object who’s color you want to scan and point your camera at it. The Pantone Connect app does the rest, automatically analyzing the color within the hollow cutout and giving you matching Pantone color values that you can either document or save within the Pantone Connect app or even send directly to a palette that you can access using Adobe’s suite of creative tools. The tech behind the Color Match card is pretty simple. The colorful swatches (and the tracking markers around it) help the Pantone app calibrate the way it captures colors, allowing you to accurately grab hues in all sorts of lighting conditions with great accuracy.
With the Foldio3, that tongue-tantalizing photograph is just literally a portfolio-case and 10 seconds away. While most traditional photo set-ups comprise a room-full of equipment and hours of setting up, the Foldio3’s innovative design puts all of that into a small flat-packed case that can fit right under your arm. Open it out and assemble it using the magnetic locks and you have yourself a studio-grade light box for your product photography. On the top of the box are 3 LED strips too, negating the need for those massive bulky studio lights. The Foldio3 comes with two backdrops too, black and white, depending on the kind of shot you need. You can even use your own green backdrop for those green-screen applications.
Literally the size of a collapsed selfie stick, the Lumapod by Martin Grabner comes with 3 incredibly small legs and a long pole that’s fortified by three Kevlar wires that keep the tripod upright. This arrangement not only allows the Lumapod to collapse down to an extremely tiny form factor, it also makes setting the tripod up easier and dramatically faster. As a profession or a hobby, photography is always highly time critical. The amount of time it takes for you to set your gear up can often cost you that perfect shot. The Lumapod’s design brings the tripod setup time from minutes to a mere 4 seconds, even verbally simplifying the process to three words. Twist, pull, set. Lumapod’s aluminum frame is both light and sturdy, and the Kevlar cords hold the tripod up using tensile strength.
Kodak’s Smartphone Photography Kit has everything you need to take stunning pictures. They add to your phone’s ability to create great images by giving you depth, lighting, and stability. The kit comes as a collective of three accessories (which can be bought separately too), namely a mini tripod specifically for smartphones, a portrait ring-light that clips onto your phone for great low-light selfies, and a set of 2 clip-on smartphone lenses to give your phone the ability to click ultra-wide and macro images, allowing you to either look at the bigger picture, or to zoom into minute details. With Kodak’s comprehensive smartphone photography kit, you can take that powerful camera in your pocket and click pictures that are incredibly stable, thanks to the tripod, or have a beautiful diffused glow, courtesy the ring light, or just explore the world through literally a different set of lenses! It’s a Kodak Comeback!
Developed around a proprietary technology called Weathershield, the jacket keeps water, dust, and snow out while still remaining breathable on the inside. While the build and the fabric allows photographers to overcome tough weather conditions, the design of the jacket itself only enhances that fact. On the outside, the jacket has four cargo pockets that can fit lenses as large as 200mm, while allowing you to holster your camera while you’re preparing yourself for a shot. The Langly also comes with a tether system that attaches to various accessories, like a memory-card holder with space for as many as 7 different memory cards, a DSLR battery pouch, as well as a separate battery pouch for your flash. Additionally, it even comes with a lens-cap holder (and even a lens wipe cloth), so you’re never rummaging around in your backpack to store/retrieve accessories. The jacket comes with an RFID lining around the pockets too, letting you store your wallet, cards or passport in easy-to-access spots that’s secure even from digital theft. With the Langly, every object is always at arm’s length, and can be accessed without as much as looking away from your viewfinder.
The VIEWPT (pronounced Viewpoint) VR180 NANO is a small, portable dual-lensed camera that was designed to mimic human eyes. With two identical 180° lenses placed a few calculated inches apart, the VIEWPT VR180 NANO captures a left and right channel just like your eyes do. Bring that into a VR headset and you don’t just see images, you see a point of view. The pictures and videos you capture using the VIEWPT NANO feel incredibly realistic because you actually perceive depth in them, something your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phone can’t do just yet. The most they can do is perform edge-detection to create a foreground and background, but the VIEWPT NANO’s images are in real, cinema-grade stereoscopic 3D. The fisheye lenses cover most of human peripheral vision, allowing you, as a consumer or a content creator, to explore a format that is still reserved for professionals rather than consumers. The VIEWPT NANO sits right on your smartphone, letting you film video just the way you would with your phone’s camera.
Defox’s 3D printed Periscope case does a pretty neat thing. It repositions your camera so you can look down at your phone while record what’s happening ahead of you. Essentially, you’re not pointing your phone’s camera at the subject being shot, but rather, are filming or shooting imagery with your phone in a much more natural manner. This interesting deviation allows your phone to become an even more accessible device because now your phone’s literally an action camera! You can mount your phone on handlebars or even place it on your car’s dashboard and the phone’s case uses a 45° mirror to film things that are located at a 90° angle. The case lets you capture your ride handsfree, because you don’t need to hold your phone in position anymore.
