On our last poll, we asked a general (yet hard) question – what would you need to do in order to improve your photography.

There are some great responses there and thanks for everyone who opened up and answered this not-so-easy-to-expose question.

Our of that question a few main groups were identified

1. I need more time

2. I need better skills

3. I need better equipment

I have and will tackle all those issues on the blog, however this time I would like to focus on the third item – Gear.

This poll has a simple question – What is the next piece of gear on your shopping list, and I am not talking fantasy list here, I am talking about items that you can actually afford to buy and plan on using in the short term period.

It may be an item at the core of photography – a camera or a lens; A lighting aid like a strobe, flash or modifier, or something completely peripheral like a new computer or a new piece of software. Props, Straps, place, really anything that you feel will give you that push.

While you can form the answers in any way you’d like see if you can answer those two questions: what is the exact item (bad: a new lens / good: a Nikkor 85mm 1.8 lens) and how it will help your photography. Please be as specific as you can.

I’ll go first: I am planning on getting a set of pocket wizards. I have had enough of misfires from my cheapo RF slaves and I feel that the price is worth removing the hustle annoyance and embarrassment of having the flash not pop when I need it too.

(If you are reading this via RSS, you may want to click through to read/share your thoughts) [(cc) Image credit fensterbme][Read More…]

Many of us are carrying gear bags (Or gear trucks). It would be interesting to find our what are we using those bags for.

So This poll is about understanding what is in your photo bag. To exclude the obvious answer, cameras and lenses are a given. And to make it a bit more interesting, please choose only a single item you consider to be most important.

I did not include pre-loaded options on this one, so you can get as creative as you want.

All the polls I ran gave really interesting results in the open text box, and I expect this one to be no different. Especially that “Other” is only option now.[Read More…]