accessory

Light painting is something that takes a lot of time and patience. Even after many trial and error attempts, nailing the exact look you're going for can be a challenge. pixelstick is a crazy new tool that aims to change all that, making mind-blowing light paintings something even artistically challenged photographers can create.

A basic description of it is: it's a stick-like device that lets you print digital images into long exposure photos.

Want to give your plain-looking camera a dash of color? Kapsones can help you do that. It's a new line of custom lens hoods -- the company describes them as "jewelry for your camera" -- that launched recently over in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Are ordinary macro lens attachments for your smartphone not enough for you? Want to zoom in closer? 22-year-old mechanical engineer Thomas Larson has just the lens for you. It's called the Micro Phone Lens, and is a tiny little attachment that instantly lets you focus on and capture very small subjects.

French smartphone device startup SmartMobilAccessoire is working on a new product called the Biiwatch. It's a watch-like device that's worn around the wrist, but instead telling you the time, it's designed to let you tell your smartphone when to snap a photo.

Custom gear maker Walter Pretorius of Walter Leica has come out with a new product for photographers who want a safe and fun way to carry additional memory cards. It's the Walter SD Card Holder, a tiny Leica M look-alike that has memory card slots of its own.

Light meters are less common now than they used to be. Now that we can see our photos right after we've shot them and delete, adjust settings and re-shoot, some people just don't see the merit in spending $300+ on a professional meter.

Of course, a light meter can be an amazing tool, and so the folks at Lumu Labs have designed one they're calling "the light meter of the 21st century": a tiny, iPhone attachable light meter that claims to perform far outside its price range.

Are you so crazy in love with photography that you would wear a lens-inspired wedding ring on your finger? If so, alternative ring company Titanium Buzz has a wedding band just for you.

The company has just launched a new product called the Camera Lens Ring. It's a simple ring that looks like something torn from the middle of a camera lens.

HoldFast Gear makes gear for photographers that you won't really find from other companies. Last year one of their big products was the MoneyMaker, a suspenders-style leather camera strap that looks like it popped out of an old detective film.

Today the company added a new eye-catching product to its lineup: the Bison Tote. It's a tote bag that's made out of bison hide.

Announced near the end of last year, Lomography's Belair X 6-12 is the world’s first 6x12 auto-exposure medium format camera.

If you love the idea of shooting medium format in a point-and-shoot manner but find the cost of buying the film prohibitive, Lomography now has a "fix" for you. The company has announced a new 35mm back for the Belair X 6-12 that turns it into a 35mm camera when you'd like to take breaks from 120 film.

Holsters are becoming pretty popular for keeping camera gear on your hip and at the ready, and now Washington-based gear company Rhino Camera Gear wants to bring the concept to batteries. It has unveiled a new product that's designed to cut a few seconds out of the time it takes you to switch out empty batteries for fresh ones.

The accessory is called the Rhino Battery Holster, and moves your juiced batteries from inside your camera bag to your side.

Back in 2010, we shared how artist Luke Jerram had created a wedding ring that can project tiny slide photographs when placed in front of a light source. After seeing that idea, Cambridge-based engineer John Ding decided that he wanted to make something similar for his sweetheart, Becky.

Ding spent the next two years designing a silver pendant that can project a photograph. He ended up creating what he calls the "Projecting Pendant."

Photographer Váncsa Domokos created a neat do-it-yourself camera accessory that uses optical fibers to control the direction and intensity of a flash unit's light. Instead of having light come directly out of the flash unit, the accessory redirects it through a thick bundle of optical fibers, allowing you to point the light in any direction -- and in different directions if you'd like.

We've seen a number camera-shaped pendant necklaces before, but here's one that's a bit different from the rest. It's a camera pendant that doubles as a small clock that hangs around your neck.

Sick and tired of your white Canon L lens clashing with your black lens hood? No? Oh well, Vello's new line of lens hoods probably isn't meant for you. The maker of 3rd party Canon lens hoods has launched three new lens hoods that come in white to match the color of Canon's high-end telephoto lenses.

Back in March 2011, we featured an iPhone app that lets you use your iPhone as a makeshift light meter. The app apparently works pretty well, but if you've been looking for a fancier solution involving your iPhone, one has finally arrived.

It's called the Luxi, and is a small clip on accessory that turns your iPhone into a proper light meter.

Disappointed that the full-frame Sony RX1 compact camera doesn't come with an optical viewfinder? Don't worry: you can use the camera's hot shoe to attach a sweet/strange-looking universal turret viewfinder! That's how DSLR Magazine customized theirs in a recently published review.

Have you ever considered adding a prism to your camera bag? Washington DC-based wedding photographer Sam Hurd has done quite a bit of experimentation using an equilateral prism -- the kind used in schools to teach properties of light -- to add special effects to his photographs. The results are pretty interesting.

Fungus is one of the banes of a camera lens' existence. In humid environments, nasty things can begin to happen if some fungus spore-laden dust particles make their way into your lens. To prevent fungus from growing inside a lens, photographers often silica gel packets to control the amount of moisture in and around their glass.

A few months ago, we told you about a neat, open-source attachment created by modder Andy Rawson that could instantly turn your smartphone into a thermal imaging camera. At the time, Rawson was intending to sell the production models for $150 and otherwise open source the project for the DIYers out there. Well, add about $25 to the price tag and a ridiculously successful Kickstarter campaign and you've got the IR-Blue.

We're not sure how many punk rock fans moonlight as photographers (or the other way around), but those who do may find the new CamCuff a tempting camera accessory. It's a fashion accessory wrist cuff that doubles as a camera strap for those of you who aren't big on the neck variety.

Wireless adapters for digital cameras can be very pricey accessories, especially when you're dealing with high-end DSLRs. Manufacturers can squeeze more money out of those who pay thousands for a camera by charging hundreds for an adapter, even though a cheaper one could work just fine. What's more, the adapters are often designed specifically for certain cameras, making them useless if you change models or makes.

The rise of smartphone photography in recent year has been transforming how people think cameras should look and work. Instead of pulling out a single-purpose device that has dedicated controls for picture-making, legions of consumers are now content with pushing a single button (whether physical or digital) in order to preserve a moment in time.

One of the emerging ideas that directly results from this shift is the modular camera. Since smartphones provide all the computing power a camera needs (as well as apps and wireless capabilities), why not simply treat smartphones as a brain, and use lens, sensor, and interface attachments to give the brain a body? That's what Snappgrip is trying to do (the interface thing, at least).

About this time last year, a startup named Satarii released the original Swivl: a nifty little motion tracking dock for your smartphone. Meant for shooting video and video conferencing, the dock would follow your every move by keeping a remote tracking marker in frame.

At the time we speculated that if the Swivl was successful, Satarii would probably go on to manufacture something compatible with larger cameras. We also mentioned that, paired with a remote shutter release, the Swivl could become a useful tool for still photographers. Not that we're taking credit or anything, but it seems Satarii were listening; this week the company announced two new, beefier, tablet- and DSLR-compatible Swivls.

Want larger photos from your iPhone? Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am has a solution for you. The entrepreneurial musician will reportedly be launching a new iPhone attachment next week that will "turn your smartphone into a genius-phone" and boost the phone's camera resolution from 8 megapixels to 14 megapixels. Like the man who developed it, the device will have a quirky name: i.am+.

ClearViewer is the compact camera's equivalent of a DSLR viewfinder attachment. It's a folding high-diopter lens that lets you use your compact camera's LCD screen as an electronic viewfinder by putting your eye less than 2 inches away from the screen. This lets you see fine details in the shot, make precise manual focus adjustments, and avoid the problem of glare.

People who spend a lot of time on their feet have products like Dr. Scholl's gel inserts to help cushion their feet and absorb the shock of walking. Likewise, photographers who press the shutter button so much that they fatigue their index finger now have a similar product as well: the Custom SLR ProDot. It's a patent-pending dot add-on for your camera's shutter button that supposedly helps reduce camera shake and finger fatigue.

You know those handle-equipped glasses called 'lorgnettes' that were popular among fashionable women in the 19th century? Instead of being fixed to your face, the spectacles were simply held up to your eyes with one hand, and were used mainly for style rather than vision correction. Kenko's new Filter Stick is kinda like that, except for camera lenses instead of booshie eyeballs.

Alongside the 24-70mm f/4 IS and 35mm f/2 IS lenses Canon announced today was an interesting tidbit that hasn't gotten that much press: Canon is refreshing its lens cap design. Canon's 'Mark II' lens caps feature a pinch-style design that's pretty standard in the industry.

Underwater housings for DSLR cameras usually aren't the cheapest accessory. Professional ones often cost as much as the cameras they house. If you'd like to add a simple layer of waterproofing to your DSLR without shelling out big bucks, check out this camera case dry bag. It's a thick, durable, and watertight plastic case that comes with transparent sections on both sides for your lens and LCD screen.

Forget DIY camera mods for keeping your sensor cool: Nikon has a much fancier solution. A recently published patent by the company (No. 2012-198447) shows a camera attachment that's specifically designed to prevent sensors from overheating. It attaches to the bottom of the camera and blows cool air into the body through the tripod mount underneath. If computers have dedicated cooling fans, why can't compact cameras?