There are many uses for a camera remote – you may need to secure your camera on a tripod and ensure that there is no shake to the camera when shooting, or you may need to expose for long time or maybe you want to just take a picture with yourself in the frame.
My old camera, Nikon D90, had a tiny IR remote that I could use for some of these purposes and it cost about $15-20. When you buy a more serious camera, however, Nikon does not make anything cheap to go with it. So you have to start looking for third party tools. There were 2 or 3 decent wireless remotes that have 10-pin connection for Nikon and in the end I selected one – Vello ShutterBoss (pictured here). While the name leaves a lot to be desired, the actual device is pretty solid and provides a great range of functions to control your camera shutter remotely. You can set up long exposures, delayed exposures, timed and interval exposures, which really helps with a lot of applications. It comes in 3 pieces – actual remote which allows you to control multiple functions, camera cable that links 10-pin connector with the receiver unit. The latter can be (but does not have to be) secured in the hot shoe.
I now cannot imagine how I would take long exposure photographs or HDR frames when I want to ensure that there will be no camera shake or shift. All in all – great tool and not very expensive either.