The Buyers guide to...Best Gifts for Photographers

If you want to carry an extra lens without the hassle of carrying a bag, or you have a non-photographic bag that you want to slip a lens into, Think Tanks Lens Case Duo is the perfect solution. These cases are available in a range of sizes to suit all sorts of lenses and they’re padded to protect your delicate optics.

Each case has loops to connect a strap (the larger ones come with a strap) so you can carry a lens without a bag if you like. There’s also a belt loop if you prefer to carry the case that way.

The cases open in two ways, via a zip around the top that lets the lid flip back, or via a zip down the side so it opens like a clamshell. This makes it easy to stow and access your lenses quickly when the need arises.

If you’re looking for a stocking-filler for your favourite photographer, how about this wrist strap from Wandrd?

It’s very well-made and keeps a camera securely attached to the photographer’s wrist. What’s more, it’s very easy to attach or detach.

Unlike some neck-straps, this wrist strap doesn’t get in the way when you lift the camera to take a photograph.

Read our Wandrd Wrist Strap Review

If the photographer in your life is just getting into shooting video the chances are that they are relying on their camera’s built-in microphone to record the audio. That may be fine some of the time, but if there’s even just a breath of wind it will capture awful quality sound. It will also pick-up any handling sounds.

The Movo VXR10 mic is very attractively priced and it significantly upgrades the quality of the audio that’s recorded with the video footage.

Movo supplies a shock mount with the mic. This slots into the camera’s hotshoe while the mic connects to the camera via the supplied 3.5mm cable.

There’s even a deadcat furry windshield supplied with the kit that does a good job of cutting out much of the wind noise.

The straps that come with cameras are OK for a while, but they don’t usually have much grip, are too short to go across your body and aren’t usually that comfortable around your neck.

The Peak Design Slide Lite is a great alternative at a good price. It attaches via easy-to-use anchor, which means you can swap the strap between cameras if you have more than one. These snap in and off anchors are nice and secure but they allow you to remove the strap in a couple of seconds, which is handy when you’re mounting the camera on a tripod for a long exposure.

The Slide Lite’s length is also adjustable which means you can use it around your neck or across your body as you like.

Read our Peak Design Slide Lite Review

This kit doesn’t take up much room in a photographer’s bag but it can transform images by softening the light emitted by a flashgun.

The Creative Lantern kit attaches to the flash or strobe by a magnet, which means it can be snapped on and off very quickly.

Along with the concertina of paper that acts as the diffuser, there are yellow, orange, red, purple, green and blue filters that enable the flashlight to be coloured for creative lighting. Hahnel also supplied small case to keep everything neat and tidy.

Read our Hahnel Creative Lantern Kit Review

Most modern enthusiast- and professional-level cameras that use an SD-type memory card are compliant with UHS-II media. That means that although you can use a UHS-I card, you may not get the full benefit of the card slot.

It’s not usually a drama if you’re shooting stills, especially if you don’t shoot in long bursts (it can limit the burst depth), but it can be a problem if you want to shoot 4K video.

Without a fast card, you may find that you can only shoot very short clips of video – some camera’s won’t let you record any at all.

This card from Sony is available in a range of capacities starting at 32GB, but the 64GB version is better value. It’s a class 10 UHS-II card, which means it’s got the chops for 4K video.

Hahnel’s Pro Cube 2 has seen a lot of use in Jabber HQ. It’s a battery charger with two slots so you can charge two batteries at a time and it comes with a selection of interchangeable plates that pop-out and snap back into place so you can use it to charge a range of battery types.

You need to buy the Pro Cube 2 to suit the make of camera that your beloved photographer uses, but it comes with several interchange plates so it works with more than one camera from that brand.

If there’s more than one camera brand in your household, you can even get hold of additional plates, but you’ll probably need to get these on a special order from your local camera store or direct from Hahnel.

Read our Hahnel Pro Cube 2 review

These gloves are perfect for any photographers who like to shoot during the depth of winter. They’re designed to go over another pair of gloves such as the Vallerret Ipsoot, but we found they work well with a pair of thin liner gloves at temperatures as low as -9C with windchill that makes it seem a lot lower. They also keep out the rain and melted snow, which would make your hands feel cold very quickly.

The tips of the gloves have waterproof zips that you can open quickly when you need to handle your camera and then close as soon as you’ve finished shooting. There are poppers to hold the mitten tips back if you should need to use them but we found it easiest to just push the mitten tops back.

Vallerret supplies a harness with the Alta Over-Mitts, which is best worn over the top of your jacket. This keeps your mittens safe and within easy reach if you take them off. The mittens are a bit on the large side for stuffing in a pocket so the harness means you can just let them dangle by your sides.

Vallerret has designed the Alta Over-Mitts for use in Arctic conditions but they’re not out of place anywhere with close to zero temperatures. After all, your hands get very cold when you’re clutching a metal camera body!

A portable SSD isn’t just useful for storing images and video during trips away from home, it can also be very useful when you’re at home.

For example, thanks to its USB-C connectivity and read/write speed of 550mb/s and 400mb/s, the Lexar SL200 Portable SSD is perfect for keeping your computer’s disk clear enough for optimal performance while you edit high-resolution images.

Those speeds mean that you can even edit Full HD or 4K footage on the drive before copying it to a permanent (slower) storage location.

Lexar offers the SL200 with capacities of 512MB, 1TB or 2TB and there’s a USB-A as well as a USB-C cable in the box should you need it.

Read our Lexar SL200 Portable SSD Review

Nik Collection by DxO comprises 8 Photoshop, Lightroom and DxO PhotoLab, making it great value for money. Handily, each package also functions a as standalone piece of software.

Nik Silver Efex Pro is probably the best known of the plugins includes in Nik Collection. It’s a brilliant black and white conversion software that can replicate the look of traditional film emulsions and enable bespoke adjustments.

In addition Nik Collection includes, Analog Efex Pro which simulates the look of traditional film, cameras and lenses, Color Efex Pro which has  a collection of colour correction and creative effect filters, plus retouching controls, Dfine for noise reduction, HDR Efex Pro High Dynamic Range (HDR) software,
Sharpener Pro for image sharpening with the ability to apply localised or global sharpening, Viveza for making local adjustment of colour and tone, and Perspective Efex which enables geometric correction software with distortion correction, horizon straightening and volumetric distortion correction.

It’s our favourite Adobe add-on!

At the end of 2020 the laws governing drone flight in the UK are changing. If you don’t have a CAA-approved qualification and your drone weighs more than 250g you will have to fly at least 150m from congested or recreational areas and 50m from uninvolved people. Getting the CAA A2 Certificate of Competence enables that distance to congested and recreational areas to be reduced to a more manageable 50m.

Also, if you invest in one of the new C2 class of drones (none have been introduced yet) you’ll be able to fly just 30m from uninvolved people or even just 5m in low-speed mode.

UAVHUB is a CAA Recognised Assessment Entity (RAE) and the World’s largest drone training school. The team offers a an A2 CofC training course that you can complete in the comfort of your own home by online learning and video training.

The course includes around 6 hours of video training, a virtual classroom session and an online exam. There’s no flight test or requirement to complete an operations manual, but you can fly commercially with an A2 CofC.

Get £30 off the price of the course with UAVHUB using the code CAMERAJABA2

Put the fun back into your favourite photographer’s life with a Lensbaby Spark 2.0. It’s available ina wide range of camera mounts and although it is available by itself in the USA, it’s generally sold for £179/$199.95 with the Sweet 50 optic.

The Sweet 50 has a focal length of 50mm and when the aperture is wide open, there’s a central sharp area surrounded soft, creamy blur.

Like all Lensbaby lenses, the Spark 2.0 is a manual focus device and in this case you focus by squeeze or stretching the lens barrel. You can also bend the barrel to shift the plane of focus away from the centre of the image, adding funky distortion to the surroundings. The image at the very top of this buyer’s guide was shot using the Sweet 50 and Spark 2.0.

Most photographers have a mini tripod but few have one as well made as the Gitzo Mini Traveler. This mini tripod has carbon fibre legs and an aluminium spider, plus the legs can be set to two angles.

Although simple, the tripod head locks tight and is cable of bearing a payload of 3Kg. A notch in the head also means that the camera can be in horizontal or vertical orientation.

At 265g, the Gitzo Mini Traveler can slip almost unnoticed in a bag, but the head can be removed if size and weight are of paramount interest. With the head removed, the legs attach directly to the camera, which means landscape-format only.

Alternatively,  the head can be exchanged for a Gitzo GH1382TQD Series 1 Centre Ball Head which takes the maximum payload to 10Kg and adds a quick release plate.

Read our Gitzo Mini Traveler Review

Small enough to slip in a camera bag and powerful enough for all sorts of still and video situations, the Rotolight Neo 2 is an LED light that can be used to provide constant illumination or flash. In fact, if you opt for the flash function and have a compatible wireless flash trigger such as the Rotolight HSS Transmitter by Elinchrom, you can shoot with high-speed sync with shutter speeds up to 1/8000sec. What’s more, because the Neo 2 is an LED, there’s no recycling time.

If you don’t have a wireless trigger, you can use a cable connection but the flash sync speed is limited to your camera’s sync speed.

Rotolight supplies the Neo 2 with a mains power connection, but it can also be powered by 6 AA batteries.

The Neo 2’s settings are easy to adjust via the two knobs on the back. In the default mode, one adjusts the brightness while the other adjusts the colour temperature of the light.

Read our Rotolight Neo 2 Review

Variable neutral density filters are very convenient, especially for video because they allow you to control the amount of light entering the camera so you can keep the shutter speed within the magic range of twice the frame rate. And for stills, you never need to have a longer exposure than necessary – it’s often handy to keep to 30 seconds or less because the camera can control the exposure time.

These filters from Haida are doubly convenient because they mount by magnetism. You just pop an adapter on each of your lenses and then you can swap the filter quickly between any of them.

The degree of filtration adjusts with a twist.

CFexpress cards slots have started to appear in more cameras. The Canon EOS R5, Nikon Z6 II and Nikon Z7 II, for example all have one CFexpress card slot and one SD card slot.

SD cards have been around for quite a while and many photographers have a small collection of them, but CFexpress cards are much newer and more expensive, so they’re not in common ownership yet. Even if the photographer in your life has one CFexpress card, the chances are that they will love a second.

As well as increasing the storage capacity, dual slot-cameras can be set to copy images to both cards at the same time, creating a convenient back-up and giving peace of mind during important shoots.

Read our Lexar Professional CFexpress Type B Gold Series Review

The Rode VideoMic NTG is a bit more expensive than some shotgun mics, but it’s solidly-made, produces great quality audio and has some useful features.

As well as being well-suited for use in the hot-shoe of a camera and connected via the supplied 3.5mm cable, the VideoMic NTG can be used as a boom mic or connected to a computer via its USB-C connection. That means if you’re out in the field recording ambient sounds, presenting to camera or jumping on a Zoom call, you only need one mic.

Helpfully, the 3.5mm output on the VideoMic NTG is auto-sensing and automatically switches between TRS and TRRS for use with cameras (TRS) and smartphones (TRRS).

There’s a conveniently-place gain control at the end of the mic plus a high-pass filter control (75Hz or 150Hz) and a high-frequency boost that’s of use when there’s a windshield in place.

It’s also possible to record two tracks at the same time with the second being at -20db. that means if the first track is distorted because something got too loud, you have an alternative track.

DJI’s Osmo Pocket was one of our favourite products of recent times and now DJI has improved upon it with the Pocket 2 (they dropped Osmo from its name).

Like its predecessor, the DJI Pocket 2 combines a camera with a gimbal for super-smooth video. This time around DJI has used a larger sensor (1/1.7-inch rather than 1/2.3-inch) and there’s an effective pixel count of 64million.

It’s very easy to use and is capable of producing superb-quality 4K video.

DJI includes a Mini Control Stick and a tripod mount with the Pocket 2. There’s also a DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo that includes more accessories such as the Do-It-All Handle, Wireless Microphone, Wide-Angle Lens and Micro Tripod which are great additions, especially for vloggers or anyone looking to start vlogging.

Read our DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo Review

GoPro leads the action camera market and the latest incarnation of its flagship model, the GoPro Hero9 Black is an impressive performer with some nice refinements over its predecessor.

The headline specifications of the GoPro Hero9 Black include 5K video recording at 30fps and 4K at 60fps – which is great news for capturing action in high-quality slow motion.

Drop to 2.7K resolution and you can record at 120fps for 4x slow-motion playback and if you got to Full HD you can shoot at up to 240fps which mean that fast action can be played back as much as 8x slower than in real life.

The Hero9 Black also has the latest version of GoPro’s excellent image stabilisation system, Hypersmooth 3.0 and it’s waterproof down to 10m without a housing.

Read our GoPro Hero9 Black Review

Peak Design makes two versions of its Travel Tripod, one with aluminium alloy legs and one with carbon fibre legs. While the price of the aluminium tripod is more palatable, if low weight is especially important, bite the bullet and go for the carbon fibre tripod which is 290g lighter.

Don’t be fooled by the thinness of the lower leg sections, the Peak Design Travel Tripod is very stable. In our tests it even delivered sharp long exposures in a stiff breeze with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens mounted on a full-frame camera.

The beauty of the Peak Design Travel Tripod is that it packs down to less than 40cm in length and its legs fold in tight together so it has a very narrow diameter. It’s a tripod that you won’t mind carrying ‘just in case’.

The aluminium Peak Design Travel Tripod can be found here on Amazon UK, while the carbon fibre version is here on Amazon UK and Amazon US.

Read our Peak Design Travel Tripod Review

If the photographer in your has all the camera gear they could ever want, what about buying them something that helps them transport it?

The Car-Boot Box is the ingenious invention of photographer Peter Sturt and some of the UK’s top photographers like Joe Cornish and Jeremy Walker have had one installed in their cars.

Each Car-Boot Box is made to fit a specific car, so you need to do some careful measurements before ordering, but there are clear instructions on the website and they can take boot sills, slopes and introducing wheel arches into account.

On the Car-Boot Box website, you’ll find single and two-drawer options, but the company can add other drawers and make bespoke boxes if necessary.

Read our Car-Boot Box Review

As it weighs less than 249g, when the new UK drone regulations come into force on 31st December, the DJI Mini 2 can be flown in parks and gardens, even in congested areas, without having to worry about getting a qualification. It can even be used for commercial work!

As the Mini 2 has a camera, you have to register as a pilot and get an operator ID from the CAA, but that’s an easy online process that costs just £9. And once that’s done, you’ll be able to capture superb aerial stills in Jpeg or DNG raw format and record high-quality 4K video.

DJI’s QuickShots modes make getting smooth, interesting video very easy even if you’re not an experience drone pilot, but it doesn’t take long to get to grips with the DJI Mini 2’s controls. The gimbal also does a great job of ironing out any buffeting from a breeze.

Read our DJI Mini 2 Review