While it does not really look like it could make a big difference, this one does. Lightsphere is a flash diffuser that looks dorky, but delivers beautiful results. Designed by renowned wedding photographer Gary Fong, it is an add-on to your existing flash that diffuses the light in its cylindrical dome (similar to a lamp shade) to eliminate the typical direct flash or bounce flash shadows. It does so with excellent results that have to be seen to be believed!
Despite their cheesy-looking website that looks like it’s overselling what the Lightshere delivers (hey, the man is from L.A. 
, this one not only works, but it far exceeded my expectations. Try it out and I bet you will not go back to on-camera flash again. Definitely worth the $50 investment!
Amazon Price: $49.00
Certainly a mouthful for such a small accessory, but this one deserves the praise.
Question: If you mount a leveling base on a tripod and level it, then your tripod head on the leveling base and the camera on your tripod head, is the camera level? Perhaps, but more likely than not, it isn’t. That’s why I slip the Bubble Level into the flash hot shoe and level my camera with the help of this gadget, just to make certain. Of course, I could straighten my images in Photoshop, but why go through the hassle, if you can keep your camera level in the first place?
The Manfrotto 2-Axis Hot Shoe Double Bubble Level might not look like a lot, but it certainly is worth the money!
Recommended!
List Price: $36.00, Amazon: $29.25
How do you know that any of the White Balance settings in your camera actually capture a scene the way you see it? You don’t! But don’t despair – WhiBal is one tool that will definitely help you overcoming this issue.
Rather than setting the in-camera white balance based on a test shot, here’s how I use it in the field: For regular shots, I take a shot with the WhiBal held in front of my camera first (this typically works only, if I use a tripod) and then I take the actual image. Back in my digital darkroom, I adjust the white balance based on the WhiBal shot in Photoshop. For panorama shots, I take the test shot with the camera pointing where I take my meter readings before taking the actual panoramic images. On my computer, I stitch the panorama first before applying the WhiBal white balance readings. While there’s a chance that the stitching software adjusts my some of settings in my stitched image, this has worked for almost all of my panoramas so far. If it does not, I manually apply the WhiBal reading to all my images before stitching.
While the use of WhiBal seems cumbersome, I spend much more time setting up for a shot, so the extra WhiBal shot causes hardly any overhead, while at the same time allowing me to capture very accurate white balance readings. This is one gadget that’s always in my bag.
Highly recommended!
Price: $36.95, Amazon: $36.95
