Accessories

• When it comes to buy­ing all the items you need to go along with your cam­era, if you know little-to-nothing about dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, it is highly rec­om­mended to choose a com­pany such as Pho­tomed or Nor­man Cam­era for pur­chas­ing what you need, because they offer Den­tal Cam­era Pack­ages that include EVERYTHING you will need.  Usu­ally not count­ing the printer, but they will cer­tainly help you with that, too.  If you know your way around a DSLR, feel free to shop around to find the best prices.  With the rec­om­men­da­tions below, please bear in mind there are a large num­ber of vari­a­tions given the num­ber of play­ers in the mar­ket today; this list is short and sweet, based on the most com­mon com­bi­na­tions to keep it simple.

Macro Lens

• Canon 100mm f/2.8
• Canon 60mm f/2.8
• Sigma (for Canon) 105mm f/2.8
• Nikon 105mm
• Sigma (for Nikon) 105mm f/2.8

Ring Flash

• Canon MR-14EX Ring Flash
• Canon MT-24EX Twin Lite
• R1C1 Wire­less Close-Up Speed­light System

Mem­ory Cards

There are so many brands avail­able, and the large major­ity of them will work just fine.  Nor does it mat­ter if you use Com­pact Flash (CF), SDHC, Micro SD, Smart­Media ℠, or any of the oth­ers.  They are all fine. A few exam­ples of the most com­mon ones:

• San­Disk
• Lexar
• Canon
• Delkin
• Kingston
• Kodak

An impor­tant point regard­ing mem­ory cards: make sure you for­mat them reg­u­larly (once a month is prob­a­bly fine).  It min­i­mizes the risk of any prob­lems build­ing up on the cards.  Also make sure you down­load the pho­tos reg­u­larly — hav­ing a card go bad with a ton of impor­tant pic­tures on it REALLY sucks.  I’ve never been that unfor­tu­nate (knock-on-wood), but have known peo­ple to whom it has hap­pened, includ­ing a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher.  Yikes!

Print­ers

Again, most photo print­ers these days can turn out some pretty nice pic­tures pretty fast.  If you want the best results, you’ll want some­thing on the higher end, though, as they can be color man­aged for best results.

Stu­dio Equipment