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My reasons for finally buying this accessory were different than those of the first reviewer, though I have to agree that when I have it attached to my camera, it definitely makes it look cooler!

In my case, I was just sick and tired of having otherwise great shots become less than great because I couldn't keep the horizontal in the horizon. The final straw was a lovely mood shot taken last summer in our drought parched wetlands. Birds were congregating in the one or two scum covered spots with moisture, and I shot a lovely silhouette of a sandhill crane surrounded by soft green. Of course, wanting to accentuate the height of the bird, I shot vertically--and the resulting photo looked tipsy.

Perhaps others have a steadier hand when shooting with the camera shutter, but mine invariably tips to one side. I added the vertical grip to my arsenal after learning such a thing existed while reading Arthur Morris's book on bird photography. He considers it essential as well. He was right. My vertical shots are now truly vertical, not angled.

The other cool thing the battery pack offers is, well, battery options. It can use the batteries from the camera, or will adapt regular batteries to power the camera, which can be an advantage when your batteries die and you aren't able to replace the camera specific batteries.

The only downside for me? I wish I'd bought it sooner. My great photos of the clock tower on Parliament wouldn't have been tipsy if I had!

I picked up a Canon EOS Elan 7E (EOS 30 in Europe, EOS 7 in Japan) because I wanted something fully-featured to begin studying photography with. The Elan 7E can do anything the bigger cameras can do, just not as quickly and minus the weighty weatherproof construction, and I was very happy with it for a long time.

After a while, however, I started noticing problems. Being in Japan, I would encounter hordes of elderly ladies and young men, clearly enthusiasts but not professionals, sporting the top-of-the-line cameras with heavy L-series lenses. When I would go to take pictures of an event - say, a parade - the professionals would elbow me out of the way at all the best spots.

Clearly, my equipment did not look cool enough.

Needless to say, big equipment provides plenty of psychological benefits and assuages those feelings of envy. But also, when you carry around a lightweight camera with a consumer-grade zoom lens, the professional photojournalists instinctively know at a glance that you are an _amateur_ getting in the way of their _serious work_. When you try to gain access to a venue, you need to first overpower the guards with the appearance of professionalism, if nothing else, and this is difficult to do when everyone else's camera is bigger than yours. People make snap judgments, and are easily fooled by big tools.

The solution? Step 1a: Buy a heavy-duty professional lens. Anything bearing the red ring of Canon's 'L' line or the groovy finish of Sigma's 'EX' line are both fine, but for photojournalism a 70-200/2.8 is ideal. Step 1b: Bulk up your camera body with this battery pack/grip. Professionals may still realize there's something amiss, but you'll probably get past the first couple glances and be able to sneak in the door. Step 1a does more to help, but 1b is almost as important and a heck of a lot less expensive.

So the most important thing is that it looks cool, but it also has a couple other interesting features. It provides a little extra weight and a better center of gravity for when you start playing with the bigger lenses. It has shutter release and exposure lock buttons so you can take portrait (vertical) shots in a slightly more relaxed position. It accepts AA batteries (alkaline, NiMH or Ni-Cad) or the usual CR123As through an ingenious little flip spacer thing. Unfortunately, powerful, lightweight, durable lithium AA batteries are verboten - "The initial voltage is high and it can may [sic] damage the camera's electronic circuitry." Since alkaline batteries are much heavier than lithiums and fail in extreme cold, the extended battery life (115 rolls with eye-controlled focusing at 20 Celsius, 0 rolls at -20) isn't too much of an advantage over CR123As. You can use rechargeables to save money, but they bleed their charges relatively quickly even when not in use, and CR123As last all year anyway as long as you're not constantly taking extreme time exposures of the stars.

So, ultimately, it gets five stars almost entirely on the coolness of its looks alone. Get one, get out there and shove a photojournalist back.