November 28, 2023 Lauren Orcinolo

Gift Guide For Photography Lovers

With the holiday season upon us, it’s time to begin to search for the perfect gift for your photographer friend. The best gifts for photographers will fill their photographer needs and can be geared towards a novice or even professional photographers. Your family and friends will appreciate the photography gift of say a new digital camera, instant camera, a mirrorless camera, DSLR camera or other photography equipment. These can come from many manufacturers like, Canon, Sony, Kodak, Nikon and Fujifilm to name a few. After all, memories experienced during the holidays, are cherished moments that are made for being captured on film. And you definitely want high-quality exposures when reliving those great times via photography.

There are many other camera accessories to look at as well when choosing a great Christmas Gift for your friends or family. For instance if you have an individual you are purchasing photography gifts for, add some camera gear like a new camera lens, a camera cleaning kit including a camera cleaning cloth, upgraded lens cap, neck strap or possibly a camera backpack. A good camera backpack is essential to traveling around for those long photography shoots like a Vlog or a long landscape photography session.

Let’s delve into some of the unique gifts that will make for some great gift ideas for your friends and family looking to improve their photography gear this holiday season.

Cameras

The DJI Pocket 2 Touchscreen Handheld 3-Axis Gimbal Stabilizer Camera
1. This is a very ergonomic pocket sized fun gift as it is so easy to use and travel with.
2. 3-Axis Stabilized Camera for reduction or elimination of blur due to shake associated with handheld shooting.
3. Great for group selfies with it’s 180 degree panorama shooting.
4. Included AI editor can automatically add music and transitions from frame to frame, creating a type of interactive photo book or picture frame.
5. Able to take photos at 64 megapixels and up to 8x zoom.
6. Included wide angle lens and DJI wireless mic with windscreen for high-quality audio and video capturing.
7. The lens cover protects the Gimbal and has compartments for smartphone adapters to ensure usage compatibility with an iPhone or Android.
8. There is storage space as well, with compatibility for a MicroSD memory card.
9. Built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for seamless connectivity allowing you to connect to the internet and upload you photos to a social media site of your choosing. Charger cable and brick is included for faster charging.
10. With it’s ease of use, lightweight and ergonomic design, coupled with it’s ability to be used as an Action Camera. This is like having a GoPro at your fingertips.
Next up we have this great gadget the Fujifilm Instax Mini 12 Instant Camera.
1. This is an instant camera or film camera, with a retro look of a Polaroid. This vintage camera has a really unique peak design coupled with some great features.
2. Built in selfie mirror which will help you get those great selfies with your family over the holidays.
3. Some of these selfies and other images and stills taken by this instant camera make for great customization of household items. If you crop and expose your instant photo, try having that placed on a coffee mug or a keychain for great memories while using daily items.
4. Automatically adjusts to ambient light or natural light, the shutter speed, flash brightness and other settings are all done for you. This means less you have to do as a photographer and more the camera will do for you while you concentrate on getting that high quality image.
5. Extremely simplistic to use. Twist the lens to turn on the camera and then twist again for close up mode. Close up mode is ideal for those close shots, where the subject or object if your shot isn’t further away than 50 cm from your camera. When Close Up mode is activated from the camera settings, your object/subject will appear in the center of the print.
6. The Fujifilm Instax Mini 12 has an automatic exposure and flash control. Therefore, as a photographer you just need to aim and depress the shutter and your instant camera acts like a photo printer.
7. Uses FUJIFILM instax mini Instant Film which can be purchased separately.
8. Finally with this iconic looking instant photo camera, try using the Instax Up app from Fuji. Using this app will allow you to scan your prints so they can be tagged and edited for sharing with your family and friends, or uploading the photos to your social media site of choice. The app can be used for post processing editing. When attached to your PC, Adobe light source and photoshop can be used as well for post processing.

Photography Accessories

In addition to a new camera, there are lots of gift ideas for the photography lover in your family.

Check out the Deco Photo Camera Bag for DSLR and Mirrorless Cameras. Some of the features of this fantastic camera backpack include the following:
1. Lightweight design with a comfortable grip top handle for easy carrying around.
2. Can hold professional sized DSLR cameras and their accessories.
3. Great dividers included allow for organizing the contents of your camera bag.
4. Combined in the Deco Photo Camera Bag bundle are: a full camera accessories kit. This includes a lens kit with Lens Blower, Lens Pen, 12in. tripod, Lens Cap Keeper, 3 Piece Antiseptic Wipes, Spray Bottle Cleaner, 2 Piece Microfiber Cleaning Cloth, 3 Piece Screen Protector, and Memory Card Reader/Case. This makes for lens cleaning a breeze.
5. You can also add a camera strap to your group item purchase.
Having a good SD card is also crucial to ensure the highest quality storage for your camera. There are many great SD cards from Lexar to choose from. You can look at the size of the memory card or flash drive which are typically rated for 64 GB of storage and up for Photographers. You can also choose from SD cards or flash drives from manufacturers like SanDisk.
1. We recommend purchasing a storage option with at least 512 GB of storage and possibly even purchasing a spare one in case you need additional storage.
2. SD cards can be rated for UHS-I or UHS-II for faster read/write capabilities.
Since cameras today come with ports galore, including USB-A, USB-C and even HDMI connectors, thinking as a photographer, an external hard drive can be so useful. Look into an SSD drive which stands for Solid State Drive, which has faster read/write times, boot times and efficiency over older platter based HDD or Hard Disk Drives.
1. Just as when you are upgrading to an internal SSD for a computer, the same premise is applicable here with cameras. The difference being that this would be an external hard drive which can attach to one of the USB ports provided on your camera.
2. Typically newer SSD drives would be compatible with the faster USB-C port, again the same philosophy as on a desktop or laptop computer.

Enjoy the Holidays

To sum up what we discussed, the holiday season is a great time to get the perfect gift for those photographers in your gift circle. Any photographer will appreciate the cameras or accessories that we highlighted, and make for some of the best gifts for photographers.

Take this wonderful opportunity to provide a Christmas gift that will have your family and friends jumping for joy as they progress in their photography journey.