Besides a Camera, What is the most indispensable piece of equipment to photography and why?

As a working photographer, the center of the universe is your camera bag and its contents. Your cameras and lenses are the tools of your trade. As you may have noted, both are mentioned in plural because just as you wouldn’t jump out of an airplane without a backup parachute, you shouldn’t attempt to photograph an emotionally spiked, non-repeatable event armed with only one camera. The same applies to lenses, too. The many aspects that comprise shooting weddings—portraits, the ceremony, dimly lit environs, tight, crowded quarters and bright outdoor settings—can push both the creative and practical limitations of the most experienced photographers. Memory Cards You can never have enough of them, and the faster the read/write speed, the better. Hi-speed memory cards keep shrinking in price while growing in capacity. If the read/write speeds of the newest cards are faster than the read/write speed of your current camera, this only means it will be an ideal match for your next camera, which will undoubtedly outstrip the camera you currently own in terms of processing speed. The same school of thought goes for the storage capacities of your memory cards. Today’s cameras capture larger file sizes—and sometimes multiple files simultaneously—not to mention video, which eats up memory like there’s no tomorrow. So when contemplating your next card, remember it wasn’t all that long ago a 1GB card was a big deal. Make sure to use cards with as much memory as is compatible with your camera. If you are going to capture large RAW files and “process” them in some sort of post-production software such as Photoshop or Lightroom, it might be wise to research cameras that sport dual card slots and the ability to write to both cards, for backup. With the exception of portraits, capturing rapid action photo sequences without missing a beat requires using cards that can process large image files as fast—or faster—than your camera can capture them. Some of the fastest CF cards we currently stock at B&H include SanDisk’s Extreme Pro-series CF memory cards and Lexar’s 400x and 600x Professional-series CompactFlash cards. For cameras using SD series memory cards, the fastest of the lot currently include Lexar’s Professional SDHC/XC memory cards and SanDisk’s Extreme Pro SDHC and SDXC memory cards. JPEGs are fine for snapshots, but if you are going to present a finished portfolio of images with as much color, dynamic range and detail as possible, you’ll want to shoot and process RAW files, which take up a great deal more space and beg for larger-capacity memory cards. JPEGs, which don’t contain as much visual information, take up less space but leave off where RAW files begin, quality-wise. One company that’s been gaining attention in the world of on-the-fly data storage is Nexto DI, which manufactures a nice selection of high-performance portable storage drives in capacities of up to 750GB, many of which contain LCD screens for reviewing and editing image files downloaded from your memory cards. Depending on the model, Nexto DI storage devices are shock and drop resistant, can transfer data to other devices and burn data to Blu-ray Discs, recover bad sectors and support a number of memory-card formats including Panasonic P2/P2E cards, UDF and FAT32 memory cards.