A battery grip is a camera accessory with two purposes – to add battery capacity to your camera and to allow you to more easily turn the camera to portrait orientation and take a vertical picture. The image to the left is one example: the official Canon grip for a Canon T1i.

One reason to have a a battery grip is that it increases the battery life of your camera. For example, the battery grip for my Canon T1i allows me to have two batteries in the camera instead of one. Effectively doubles the battery life of the camera, reducing the need to pull out batteries and change them in the middle of an event. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had to stop and change the batteries in the middle of an event/shoot now that I have the battery grip.

A second reason is that the battery grip has an extra shutter release button (and usually some other extra controls). Normally, if you turn your camera to a vertical orientation (i.e. sideways), you have to curve your hand around the lens to take a picture. Not very comfortable. The battery grip provides you with a second shutter release button that will be in the normal position when the camera is turned sideways. It makes it much more comfortable and natural to take pictures in a portrait orientation.

As with all accessories, you’ve usually got a choice between an OEM option (like the official Canon grip above) and a third-party option (like an Opteka Battery Grip for a Canon t1i). The third party option is usually much cheaper (the Opteka is about 40% of the price of the Canon grip), but sometimes there is a quality trade-off. So do your homework before you decide…

For the record, I chose the Opteka Battery Grip for a Canon t1i for my Canon t1i. I’ll write up a review of that specific battery grip in a separate post this week.