The Best Lenses & Accessories for Fall Foliage

We are in full swing of the autumn season and it’s a great time of year to get amazing fall foliage photography and capture those beautiful fall colors. Taking fall foliage photos should be a fun and enjoyable experience, you should be able to capture the colorful leaves as the fall from the trees onto the landscape. If you are a landscape photographer than this is a great time to capture the city streetscapes with the autumn foliage strewn across your photography scene. Landscape photography is a great way to show off your photography and videography skills. You can upload these gorgeous photos after you have completed your post-processing of your exposures to your social media page to show your subscribers amazing fall foliage shots and fall landscapes filled with colorful leaves.

There are a plethora of great lenses to choose from for all of your fall foliage photography. These can range from a prime lens, to a wide angle lens, a telephoto lens and a zoom lens. You can find wonderful lens choices from manufacturers like Sony, Canon, Sigma and Nikon among others.

Let’s explore some of the great choices for lenses and fall foliage photography ideas, to capture your fall photography.

Photography Ideas

Starting Off

When looking to capture amazing fall foliage photos, you may want to consider taking a trip to national park like ones located in Colorado. That way you can photo all the amazing foliage on the elevations and waterfalls at the national park.

Give a shot with taking your fall foliage images and video recordings during the golden hour. The golden hour is the period of time through the first hour of light after sunrise and the last hour of light before sunset. The sky will turn colors from red to range and then yellow allowing you to get amazing fall foliage photos during this time. The golden hour photos and videos will show the hue from the sky on the autumn foliage, plus you can upload these as a landscape photographer to your social media page and share with your friends and loved ones as well.

With fall foliage photography, images of clear blue skies, overcast days and even rainy days could present some challenges when taking your photos and videos during the autumn season. Be sure to check the weather and time of day when you want to schedule your fall photography session so you can reduce the chances of harsh lighting condition. We referenced below some great filters that can assist with these type of lighting conditions. Don’t let the lighting conditions such as sunny days or overcast skies deter you from getting wonder fall foliage photos.

So, regardless of the lighting conditions you may face during autumn photography, with the right photography tips, lenses and camera settings you will be able to take sharp, clear and vibrant still images and video recordings.

Remember that when setting up your choice of lens, you need to ensure that the lens has the versatility to be mounted on your camera. As each camera manufacturer has their own mounting system, if you choose a lens with a different mounting system than your full frame mirrorless DSLR camera, you will need to get a mounting adapter.

Try adjusting your in-camera settings to match your shooting scene. You can try capturing photos in autofocus where the camera will adjust all the settings for you based off your photography environment. However, if you would like to give manual mode photography a shot, you will have full control over all of the settings such as the ISO range, focal length, shutter speed among others.

Getting your shutter speed correct will be crucial for your photoshoot. With a fast shutter speed, less ambient light will hit your camera’s image sensor, however with long exposures by setting a slower shutter speed will let more light into your camera. This is a fantastic way to capture all the fall foliage with a longer exposure, regardless of your lighting conditions.

Additional Photography ideas and accessories

Taking wonderful landscape photography during the autumn months will come out looking great with a nice DSLR Camera. Placing a wide angle lens gives a wider depth of field to take your photos and videos.

Another way to get amazing fall foliage photos is with a telephoto lens. With such a lens, your landscape photography can zoom in on a particular area to get amazing close-up shots of the fall foliage. You may want to photograph a loved one or friend and possibly at the waterfront throughout the New England area, capturing the fall foliage as it hits that area, making for some gorgeous exposures.

When you are taking fall photography, you need a lens that can handle those bright sunny days with a neutral density filter also known as an ND Filter. This will reduce the amount of light which hits your camera sensor allowing for better high-quality photos during the autumn months. A polarizing filter will also assist in reducing annoying glare and undesired reflections when photographing your subject during your fall foliage photography. Circular Polarizer filters will also increase color saturation, therefore, those gorgeous fall colors will appear even more vibrant in your final exposure.

As we previously mentioned getting a top-notch telephoto lens that can handle all the close-up shooting needs for your fall foliage photography is best. You can you use this type of lens to zoom in and get close ups of your subject. It also wonderfully snaps close ups of amazing architecture with the fall foliage in the background. Photos like these would be great to upload to your social media page and share with your subscribers. They should be extremely impressed with your photography skills, especially in the harsher lighting conditions of fall.

Stabilization and Formats

As we have often found, with handheld photography, there is a tendency to have some blur and shake in your exposure. Therefore, your camera and lens should have good stabilization features to diminish the chances of this occurring. Another way to increase the stabilization of your camera and lens is to purchase a tripod. So, whether you are traveling for a Vlog session in the fall foliage, or just taking general landscape photography as well as portrait photography in the autumn months, you can be assured of a stable versatile photography experience.

In addition to shooting your images in the standard JPEG format, take a shot at shooting your still images in a compressed RAW format. This allows for additional post processing to be performed on your image prior to uploading your final exposure to your social media page or jus sharing with friends, loved ones and colleagues. Photographing in RAW format can even be done on your Apple iPhone as well, with either using the onboard post processing or downloading an app like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. These apps and software can also be used on your PC so you can adjust your images to your liking while viewing them on the larger screen or monitor of your PC or laptop.

Conclusion

If you want to take advantage of the amazing fall leaves and autumn colors, you need to have the right lens for your shooting environment. Whether you are looking for a good general prime lens, or a wide-angle lens to get a larger depth of field view, with the right features your lens will be able to handle the harsh shooting conditions during the autumn months. It is important to remember that depending on your photographing scene, you may also want a zoom lens to get amazing close ups of your subject during a portrait photoshoot with the fall foliage as a background. You can find a great variety of lens choices to meet all your autumn photography needs at BeachCamera.com.