As soon as I placed the order for my Canon 1D Mark IV I started to look into some accessories that I knew I would need. There are always a few things that you have to get when you buy a new camera (or any other electronic gadget for that matter) like batteries, memory cards, etc. Here are a few of the things that I immediately wanted to go with my new camera:

Batteries: This is absolutely the first thing I buy when I get a new camera. I can’t imagine why the manufacturers think it’s OK to ship a camera with a single battery, but they always do. The 1D Mark IV uses the same Canon LP-E4 battery as the other recent 1D cameras, including the 1D Mark III and the 1Ds Mark III. The OEM Canon version of these batteries sell for over $100, but there are many after market equivalents available for $30 to $50. I have always used aftermarket batteries in my cameras and have never had a problem, and I would have no problem recommending that for this camera as well.

Memory Cards: The 1D Mark IV takes both CompactFlash cards and SDHC cards. I have a pretty good supply of CF cards (be sure to get fast UDMA cards) but I needed to pick up a couple of SD cards. I recommend Lexar 8GB SDHC cards, but many other cards will do the trick too. Just be sure to get at least Class 6 cards for best performance with video.

Camera Bag: I want to be able to carry a good selection of lenses in addition to my camera body, and my old bag simply wasn’t big enough. Of course this happens all the time with photographers… We always need new bags! I did a lot of research and decided that the best bag for me was the Tamrac 777 Summit. Everyone’s needs are different, but this bag is definitely worth checking out.

Video Microphone: I haven’t done enough video with the new camera yet to really know, but everyone says that the built in mic simply isn’t good enough. So I immediately invested in a shotgun microphone from Rode called the VideoMic. I honestly haven’t even tested it yet, but I’m told that it’s a great mic for shooting videos with a DSLR. It attaches to the camera via the hotshoe and connects directly to the mic in port on the side of the camera.

As with all new cameras I’m sure there will be many more purchases over the next few months, but these things were enough to get me started. I’d love to hear about any other gadgets that might help make the camera better and easier to use!

Photographers love to go on and on about what gear they use, and why they made that choice. One topic that I hear covered ad nauseum is the size of their flash memory cards. Bigger is better, right? Not necessarily, it seems. Many photographers love to argue that using 1 really large flash card is just like putting all your eggs in one basket. That is, if a CF or SD card goes bad, you could potentially lose a lot more of your images than if you had used multiple smaller cards instead.

While that logic seems perfectly reasonable, I take another line of thought on this one.

I’ve made many thousands of images over the years, and I’ve never had a card go bad. Don’t get me wrong, I know that these things are a lot like hard disk drives and that statistically they WILL eventually fail. But that hasn’t happened to me yet. So while I am careful with my cards, and I am definitely concerned about one of them going bad and corrupting my files, I don’t think that it’s the most likely way that I will lose my images.

I have physically lost many pieces of photography gear over the years, including a couple of very expensive CompactFlash cards. So for me, the far more likely way that I would lose images would be to lose or misplace a full card after I changed it out for an empty one.

For me, this choice is easy. I use the biggest and fastest memory cards I can afford. Currently that means Lexar 8 GB 300x CompactFlash
cards, but I plan to upgrade to 16 GB cards soon. I also have some older SanDisk Ultra II cards and I’ve never had an issue with any of them or with any of my Lexar cards.

Am I putting all my eggs in one basket? Maybe, but for me that makes more sense than having a bunch of smaller cards that are difficult to manage and keep track of.

What about you? One big card, or several smaller cards?