Photographers are notorious for lusting after gear and gadgets, which makes an event like Amazon’s annual Prime Day festivities extremely attractive. While there isn’t a ton of hardcore camera gear lurking in the lists of sale items, there are some very useful photography accessories on which you can save some cash. Here’s a list of some relevant items you can buy today while leaving some cash in your new lens fund.
Other worthwhile deals
- Datacolor SpyderX Pro – Monitor Calibration Designed for Serious Photographers and Designers SXP100—$136 (was $170)
- Kodak Dock & Wi-Fi Portable 4×6″ Instant Photo Printer—$100 (was $150)
- HP Sprocket Portable Photo Printer—$60 (was $100)
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Ideally, we could all have fancy, reference-grade monitors for editing photos. But, you don’t have to spend a ton of money to get something relatively reliable. This 21.5-inch monitor is just $89 and has IPS tech in the display, which helps maintain more accurate and consistent color than the clapped out screen you’ve been using since college.
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Instant film photography is undeniably fun, but buying endless refill packs to feed your camera is not. This monster lot of Instax Mini film is enough for 120 pictures for $79, but you’ll get another 10 percent off during Prime Day. It’s great for a wedding, event, or taking 120 photos of your cat while it’s sleeping, then pinning them all onto your wall in a makeshift shrine to scare people who come over to your house.
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You can never have too many memory cards and, during Prime Day, Sandisk’s Extreme cards are as cheap as we’ve seen them. The 128 GB cards are just $24, and the 64 GB cards (my favorite capacity) are only $14. Buy some extras and stick them in every bag you own so you’ll never be stuck in the embarrassing situation of bringing your camera but forgetting your card.
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If you’re constantly shuffling photo files onto and off of your hard drive, a portable SSD like this one from Sandisk will make your life a lot easier. The solid-state drive inside is fast enough that you can edit right off the device itself. Then, when you’re done working on a session, transfer it over to your main backup drives. The Extreme SSD weighs just 1.44 ounces and can easily fit in a pocket. It connects via USB-C to your computer and its rugged enough to withstand water, dust, and even drops to concrete. The 1 TB version is seriously on sale for just $135 (down from $349), but you can step down to the 500 GB model for $89.
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Sous Vide machines Right now is a fantastic time to shoot film, with new stocks popping up and a growing community of analog shooters sharing work online. Getting film processed, however, can be time-consuming and really expensive. Fortunately, it’s easy to do it yourself. The biggest challenge is controlling the temperature of your chemicals during the process, but a sous vide machine simplifies that, too. This immersion heater is meant to perfectly cook steaks, but you can use it to create a warm water bath to keep your developer and fix just the right temp. The sleek Anova is just $99 and Instant Pot model is even cheaper (though less powerful) at $54.
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Hard drives aren’t exciting to buy, but they’re essential if you don’t want your digital photo archive to vanish into the aether after a crash. There are a couple of hard drive options on sale during Prime Day that makes sense for a heavy shooter. Seagate has an 8 TB hard drive that’s just $119. If your collection isn’t quite that big, you can opt for something smaller and even cheaper like the WD 6TB Elements desktop drive, which gets you 6 TB for $89. Neither option is screaming fast, but they’re great for regular backups. Get a pair of them and have a backup to the backup.
