Digital photography resources

If you can't find what you need in your local stores, here are some good online places to shop for specialized items and services.

General

Digital Photography Review—An excellent all-around place to learn about digital cameras.

Imaging Resource Reviews—Incredibly thorough, detailed reviews—more info than the owner's manual!

Where to buy cameras

Amazon—great selection, fast shipping, and their prices are usually as good as anybody else's. Both of us usually check Amazon first when buying... well, almost anything.

B&H Photo-Video—One of the oldest and most reputable photo equipment dealers, and a favorite of the pros.

Accessories

1000Bulbs—inexpensive (six bucks each) source for 30 watt 5000K compact fluorescent bulbs.

Glif—If you're shooting with a smartphone, you'll need an adapter to use it with a tripod. There are plenty of choices, but we recommend the under-$30 Glif. It's sturdy, easy to attach and detach, and allows vertical or horizontal phone mounting.

You can find a lot of photo accessories at Amazon, but for specialized stuff, try B&H Photo-Video.

Software

Affinity Photo—the best affordable image-editing software we know of. It's $49.99 for either Mac or Windows or $19.99 for iPad. Free trial versions are available for Mac and Windows (but not iPad), so you can check it out before you buy.

Adobe Photoshop—Yes, it's the choice of professionals. Both of us sometimes use it. But... it requires a $20.99 per month subscription—that's over $250 a year! And it's a heavily feature-bloated, intimidating program—not recommended for casual users.

Halide—If you're shooting with an iPhone and want more control than Apple's Camera app gives you, check out Halide. It gives you more manual controls and better ways to use them, which can be handy in quilt photography. And it's only $5.99.

QuickGamma—If your video display is uncalibrated, then you're not seeing what the rest of the world sees when it looks at photos you create. Macs have monitor calibration tools built in (in the Displays system preference pane), as do Windows 10 and later versions (in the Settings app). But earlier Windows versions don't have this feature. QuickGamma and its companion program QuickMonitorProfile are free, and they're definitely better than nothing.