Last Updated on 03/16/2017 by Chris Gampat
In this day and age being a photographer is more than just carting around some cameras and lenses. Technology has become an integral part of the photography equation. This means that beyond your standard photography gear, such as lenses, cameras, tripods, and such, you also have this array of technology tools that can and do help make a photographer’s life that much easier and hassle free. Today we wanted to highlight some of that tech.
High Quality Wide Gamut Display Monitor
Having a quality display monitor to do your image processing on is imperative to any aspiring professional photographer. Sure, you can get the job done on a basic screen with limited sRGB colors, but in order to truly bring the most out in your images a real wide color gamut monitor with a high resolution is key. Luckily monitors like these are not nearly as expensive as they once were, so here are a few good options for those looking.
- BenQ 27-inch SW2700PT Monitor – Buy One
- BenQ 27″ PD2700Q Monitor – Buy One
- BenQ BL2420PT 23.8″ IPS Monitor – Buy One
- ASUS PB258Q 25″ WQHD Monitor – Buy One
Rugged External Storage
Another key piece of tech for any modern photographer is a rugged and reliable external storage device for easy backups and storage while you are out and about. Nothing is worse than losing your images to a faulty drive, stolen memory cards, or worse. Having a solid external hard drive you can count on to take a beating and keep your data safe is absolutely essential!
- G-Technology G-DRIVE – Buy One
- G-Technology GDrive Mobile – Buy One
- LaCie Rugged Mini USB – Buy One
- LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt – Buy One
In-Home Backup Solutions
So we just talked about backing up data while on the go, but its just as important to have it backed up at home or the office as well. There are many ways to accomplish this, from in home NAS units to desktop RAID arrays and here are a few of the best options out there for those needing to solidify their primary backup solution.
- WD My Cloud Pro Series PR4100 – Buy One
- Synology DS216J NAS – Buy One
- QNAP TS-251 2-Bay – Buy One
- Drobo 5C – Buy One
Dedicated Graphics Cards
Graphics cards are not just for gamers people, the imaging software you use on a daily basis can most likely make use of a dedicated graphics card during your photo and video editing workflow which will both improve playback and speed up the rendering process. Plus you get the side benefit of having some better gaming performance for when you need a break!
- Sapphire Radeon NITRO+ Rx 480 8GB – Buy One
- MSI GAMING GeForce GTX 1060 6GB – Buy One
- MSI Computer GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G – Buy One
- AMD FirePro W7100 8GB – Buy One
High Speed Memory Cards
This one is a little more obvious, but having high speed memory cards is absolutely essential to the modern photographer as RAW file sizes increase to somewhat insane levels. These cards get the images off your camera as fast as possible, limiting possible buffer issues if you need to capture a lot of images in quick succession, and they also make importing those images back onto your computer faster as well since they can move the files from the card into the computer at a faster rate. In all these are some of the easiest ways to save time as a photographer.
- SanDisk UHS II 64GB SD Cards – Buy One
- Lexar Professional 64 GB UHS II SD Cards – Buy One
- Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS II 280MB/s SD – Buy One
- Sony Memory Card 128GB UHS II – Buy One
Obviously these are not the only technology tools at a photographer’s disposal today, but these are some of the common things we wanted to highlight in today’s post. Hopefully this has helped you think of some tech upgrades to consider in the coming year.