Photographing wildlife is one of the most rewarding types of photography. Capturing animals and their behaviors in their natural habitat can keep us photographers clicking for hours! If you’re reading this, this is likely true for you as well.

As I took more photos, I found that there were many accessories that could make my life much easier when in the field. In this article, we put together 10 of these accessories that will help you succeed with wildlife photography. These are not at all required, so don’t let this list stop you from taking any photos!  The only gear you really need is a camera, lens, and perhaps a tripod.

Side note: if you are looking to improve your wildlife photography, check out our last article on tips for wildlife photography composition.

Without further ado, let’s get into it and make our lives easier with the 10most useful accessories for wildlife photographers!

#1 – Fast Memory Card

If you chose your camera for its framerate, a fast memory card should be a no brainer. Nothing is worse than waiting for your memory card to record images while there is an epic wildlife showcase right before your eyes.  Not choosing the right memory card can make you feel utterly powerless when a continuous burst photo opportunity arises.

How do you choose the right memory card?

There are a few pieces of information you need to know to make sure you select the right memory card. You don’t want to blindly choose here. If you get a card too slow, you’ll be stuck with buffering issues. If you just choose the card that is the most expensive and just came on the market, you might find that it’s not even compatible with your camera. It helps to do your research here, I’ll show you how.

TYPE

First, find out what memory card type your camera accepts. CF, SD, SDHC, SDXC? What card rating does the camera support? Class 4, 6, or 10? UHS-I, II, or III? You can find this information in your owner’s manual or through a quick google search.

SPEED

Once you know what type of card your camera can accept we can now focus on the read/write speeds. Read speed is the rate you can take data off your memory card. Write speed is the rate you can add data to the memory card. We will be focusing on the write speed here, as this is what can give you the most trouble in the field.

I found the best way to judge what write speed you should purchase, is through memory card tests done on your specific camera. This helps us find the upper limit of our cameras data transfer rate. For the Canon 6D Mark II, a few quick google searches showed that even the fastest memory cards maxed out at around 70-80mbps (megabytes per second) write speed. This means even if I get an expensive card capable of 200mbps write speed, I will still be stuck with 70-80 mbps. We need to find a memory card that can handle, at minimum, a write speed of 70-80mbps. Anything significantly faster could be money wasted.

Now that we know the type of card compatibility along with write speed needed, we can purchase a memory card more strategically. This ensures we get those continuous burst shots of wildlife worry free!

OUR PICKS

• SanDisk 64GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Card
• SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Card
• Lexar Professional 633x 64GB SDXC UHS-I Card
• Lexar Professional 633x 128GB SDXC UHS-I Card

#2 – Wildlife Photographer’s Backpack

You likely already have a backpack that you use for your wildlife photography trips. With telephoto lenses being so massive, they are not really safe or convenient in just any backpack. Not to mention, large telephoto lenses are some of the most expensive single items you can purchase in photography. You really want to protect that investment while allowing it to come with you wherever you go. Fortunately, we have done all the research for you on the best wildlife photography backpacks.

Ideally, you want a comfortable backpack that can store your lens while your camera body is still attached. This way you can travel long distances and also be ready to take photos in a couple seconds. A good backpack capable of carrying a telephoto lens with the attached body is not cheap. However, the convenience and protection is always worth it. The easier time you have carrying gear around chasing wildlife, the more likely you are to keep doing it!

As we touched on in our Backpacks for Wildlife Photographers article, make sure you are looking for the following features to make a good choice:

• Comfort (Does it have back padding, waist straps?)
• Capacity (Can hold your main lens with body attached along with some accessories?)
• Protection (Does it have adequate padding between items in the bag, and the outside?)
• Rain Cover (Does one come included? If not you’ll need to buy one that fits.)
• Low Weight (You don’t want to add too much weight to your already heavy gear.)
• Tripod Support (Don’t forget the tripod!)

OUR PICKS

• Lowepro Whistler Backpack 450 AW II
• Think Tank Photo Streetwalker HardDrive V2.0 Backpack

#3 – Gimbal Head for Tripods

Some large telephoto lenses are way too heavy to be hand held at all times. When using a tripod for wildlife photography, most photographers start out with a traditional ball head design. They are relatively affordable, and work for most situations. You simply mount your lens to the tripod with the lens mounting hole. Then you just loosen the ball head clamp resulting in free movement of the lens while the tripod holds most of the weight.

If you have done this before, you’ll know the camera isn’t completely weightless. The ball head design still requires you to hold and balance the camera/lens setup in the desired direction. With such a high center of gravity over the pivot point, you are still very unstable. Also, with a ball head you not only have to manually control pan and tilt. You also have to balance the roll of the camera and make sure your shots are level with the horizon. That’s three axes you have to control and balance while taking photos.

For these reasons, ball heads are not the best solution available.

Enter gimbal heads! Gimbal heads are designed to give you a completely stable tripod shooting experience. They effectively remove the roll axis from the equation, and move the tilt axis up next to your camera so it is near the center of gravity of your camera. They come with adjustable slides so you can carefully dial in your camera/lens mounting location so it is completely balanced. Even when you are not even holding it! This essentially makes the camera weightless and smooth to move around.

You can be much more relaxed with a gimbal head. This allows you to focus on the images and the wildlife. If you dragged your tripod out in the field with you, you shouldn’t need to focus on supporting the camera so much. You would do yourself a big favor with a gimbal mount to really offload the all the support requirements to your tripod.

OUR PICKS

• Wimberley WH-200 Wimberley Gimbal Head II
• Oben GH-30 Aluminum Gimbal Head

#4 – Teleconverter

Telephoto lenses have much more reach than normal lenses, but do you ever have ‘enough’ reach? Of course not!

You can always get an increased focal length with teleconverters! Teleconverters are small optics that you place in between your camera and lens that multiply the focal length of your lens. Common teleconverter multiplier factors on the market are 1.4x and 2.0x. This effectively takes your current investment of a lens and gives it a focal length of a much more expensive lens. Not only is this a form of cost savings, but there is significant weight savings when using a teleconverter instead of the equivalent super telephoto lens.

If you have a 70-200mm, a 2.0x multiplier gives you a 140-400mm lens! Have a 400mm prime? Make it 560mm with a 1.4x converter or 800mm with a 2x converter!

If you have a crop sensor camera, you do get even more range. For example a 1.6x crop ASP-C sensor with a 1.4x teleconverter and a 600mm lens would have an effective focal length of 1300mm (1.6 x 1.4 x 600mm).

There definitely is a downside here however. If your current lens and camera requires a lot of light to get good photos, a teleconverter may not be the best choice for you. Based on the magnification you choose, there is usually one or two stops of exposure reduction. This means you will have to open up your shutter, widen your aperture, or bump up your ISO to get that exposure back.

OUR PICKS

CANON

• EF 1.4X III Telephoto Extender
• EF 2.0X III Telephoto Extender

NIKON

• Nikon AF-S FX TC-14E III (1.4x) Teleconverter
• Nikon AF-S FX TC-17E II (1.7x) Teleconverter

SONY

• FE 1.4x Teleconverter
• FE 2.0x Teleconverter

#5 – Lens Skins

It’s easy to look out of place with a solid white or black lens. Blending in and being very stealthy can give you a big advantage in wildlife photography. Animals being unaware of our presence gives us a better chance of capturing them in their natural state, and keep them from running far away.

Lens skins and covers can help here. With the lens and lens hood being much larger than the rest of the camera, a lens skin can help disguise them.

Not only does a lens skin offer some camouflage, it also serves as a good protection measure. My telephoto lens has scuffs all over due to the various environments I found myself in when chasing wildlife. If you want your lens to last longer, or just want to keep it in good shape for resale/upgrading, it really pays to have protection.

There are many camo types on the market for popular lenses. Think about the environments you constantly find yourself in when deciding which pattern/graphic to go with. If you’re up in Alaska with a black lens, maybe a white skin is the right choice. If you are always in the mountains, a forest camo should do the trick.

OUR PICKS

LensCoat Lens Covers

#6 – Battery Grip

Capturing wildlife takes a lot of patience. With photography, being in the field for a long time likely means you will need to swap batteries every now and then. I don’t know about you but, I am not the best at observing my battery levels while taking photos. I am always too focused on the subjects I am shooting, composition, exposure, etc.. Soon enough, my battery indicator is flashing on the last bar and I have to scramble to find a battery. When this time comes you have no choice but to stop taking photos and swap out battery packs. This also could introduce lots of audible noise when shuffling through your backpack to find a spare battery. This could easily startle or even scare off animals.

Battery grips can be a big help here. They store 2x battery packs so you essentially double the amount of continuous shooting time you have. (Assuming you have enough memory). This helps us photographers have an uninterrupted shooting experience, which is always a blessing. Battery grips are especially useful for times you are shooting on a tripod or otherwise mounted. Shooting handheld with a large telephoto lens and a battery grip will not be very fun due to the increased weight. In my review of the BG-E21, I found that the battery grip and extra battery added a whole pound to my 6D Mark II. This may not seem like a lot, but it will make a difference in how long you are able to handhold a camera.

Battery life is not the only advantage with a battery grip. Grips give us a comfortable option to photograph wildlife vertically. They also provide us with a much more ergonomic grip of the camera.

OUR PICKS

• Canon Battery Grips
• Nikon Battery Grips
• Sony Battery Grips

#7 – Beanbag Camera Support

If you are on a safari, or even driving you off-road to chase some wildlife, a camera bean bag can be a big help. Bean bags sit on your car’s windowsill and let you rest your lens on them for stable shooting. Without a bean bag, you can put a lot of pressure on a single point of your car. This could damage your car’s paint, or more importantly, scuff your precious lens. Damage to either is not required for a stable shooting experience in the comfort of your own car.

I usually use a towel or an old shirt in these situations (how I captured the image above). However, the bean bag offers much better protection to both you and your car with a very quick setup. You can also use this bean bag for ground level shots where you want the camera slightly raised to be in line with your view. Simply place the bean bag on the floor, and as you lie down, you can position the bean bag such that your camera is level with your eyes.

OUR PICKS

• Grizzly Camera Bean Bag
• LensCoat LensSack Pro Jr.
• LensCoat LensSack Pro

#8 – Binoculars

It’s not always easy to scan the land with your heavy camera and lens setup. Even if you are using a tripod with a gimbal head, you are not nimble enough to easily look around 360 degrees.

With a set of binoculars, you can get around the same magnification as your camera and lens, with a ton more mobility. You should be able to scan the landscape relatively quickly, and once you spot the wildlife, grab your camera to start capturing.

Most common binocular magnification levels are 8x, 10x, and 12x. With lenses, we use focal length in millimeters to characterize how much reach out cameras have. So how does binocular magnification compare to focal length?

To get the magnification level of your lens, first you should know your effective focal length. For crop sensors this means multiplying the focal length by your sensor’s crop factor. For example, a 400mm lens on a Canon 7D would result in an effective focal length of 400×1.6 = 640mm. A full frame sensor with a 400mm lens, is simply 400mm.

We know that 50mm on a full frame sensor is equivalent to a ‘normal’ 1:1 perspective, therefore we can call this 1x magnification. With this information we can divide our effective focal length by 50mm to find the magnification level. Using our 7D example above, 640mm effective focal length divided by 50mm gives us a 12.8x magnification level. So if we wanted the closest set of binoculars to our camera/lens magnification level, we would go with a 12x magnification set of binoculars.

OUR PICKS

• ACULON A30 10X25
• 8245 ACULON A211 8×42
• 8250 ACULON A211 16×50
• 8252 ACULON A211 10-22×50

#9 – Quick Access Storage

We already talked about the importance of uninterrupted shooting when it comes to wildlife photography. You can NEVER predict when the perfect shot presents itself. Because of this, we have to minimize any potential down time so we can spend more time shooting.

We also discussed having a proper backpack for wildlife photography, however this may not be the best place to leave your commonly used accessories while shooting. We want to reduce any noise that can be caused by shuffling through our backpacks. Memory cards, batteries, teleconverters all need to be in an easy to remember and easy to reach location.

Quick access storage can be anything that is on you when your backpack can be a small distance away. Popular options for quick access storage include a pocketed vest or even a fanny pack. These storage solutions don’t need to hold a lot of items. That is what your backpack is for. They only need to hold the critical items we touched on before: power, memory, accessories like teleconverters, and maybe a snack for yourself.

OUR PICKS

• Think Tank Photo Cable Management 10 V2.0
• Lowepro GearUp Wrap
• Lowepro GearUp Case
• Peak Design Tech Pouch

#10 – Field Guides

Field guides are not necessarily books from a book store on specific animals. Anything or anyone who has information on the wildlife you are trying to capture can be a field guide. I am still listing this as an accessory though because basic literature on animals can help immensely. Having more information on where wildlife lives or what time of day they are active, can be a huge advantage in successfully capturing wildlife images. Being strategic with your search for wildlife by asking around or even just picking up local wildlife brochures can give you a huge advantage in your search. You are more likely to find wildlife with help.

This was exactly how we spotted some antelope outside of Bryce Canyon National Park. We stopped by the visitor center and asked around about Pronghorns. Of course the individual we were talking to saw them the day before and was able to point them out to us on a map. Couple hours of searching and we found them!

Knowing more about the animal, where they like to hangout, and what time of day they are seen will be critical with certain animals. Don’t ignore this tip!

Wrap Up

I hope these items can help make your life a little easier when out in the field. If you have any more accessories that made a difference in your experience, please share in the comments below!