This is it. This is the last of Stuff’s online Gift Guides. Hopefully, you’ve had enough time to snap up the best gifts this side of Santa’s factory for your varied group of friends and relatives. The last lot is for the person who’s always the last to be included in the photos when everyone’s having fun. They’re not that overlooked, they’re just the ones behind the lens.
Whether these gifts are headed to a video vamp, a photo phenom, or just a general social media wannabe’s tree, you’ll find that everything is a confirmed hit. No, really, everything. That may account for some of the larger price tags but nobody said that pursuing photography and its close colleagues was an affordable hobby. Come on, guys.
If you don’t find anything to your liking in here, mosey on over to the Dec23/Jan24 issue of Stuff, where we’ve got this same category with a bunch of different kit. If you can’t settle on a present after that, unfortunately we’ve run out of ways to help you.
Gift Guide 2023 – Photography Edition
Lenspen NLPK-1 Cleaning Kit
Everybody has camera lenses (somewhere) but not everybody cleans them the way that they should. Let’s put it this way. A somewhat clean shirt probably isn’t going to cut it. There’s a reason this gift guide opens with a relatively simple cleaning solution from Lenspen. A retractable brush, a blower, a dense microfibre cloth, and the patented ‘pen’ portion keep camera lenses free from specks of dirt and dust. Your intended recipient should probably also stop eating pasta next to their camera bag but this little add-on will minimise the damage that’s possible from a bowl of alfredo.
R500 | ormsdirect.co.za
Joby GorillaPod 5K tripod
It just wouldn’t be a photographic Christmas without one of Joby’s Gorillapods under the tree. The second-best thing about it is that the legs can be configured into as confusing a shape as possible before you wrap the thing. The best thing about it is that you can mount a photographic device — camera, smartphone, action cam — in an unlikely spot and get some genuinely interesting angles of a given subject. And that’s what this gift guide is all about — looking at things in a different light.
R2,160 | outdoorphoto.co.za
Samsung T4 Shield
Media files, even if you’re snapping pictures (“going in RAW”, we believe it’s called), can be massive. Massive files require massive storage. And since large files take ages to copy, an SSD with a little more speed than most is a must. The T4 Shield from Samsung is certainly cocky enough, claiming to be nearly ten times faster than other external HDDs. We’re not going to dig into that number, since there’s a lab and graphs involved, but the T4 is undeniably speedy. That’s what counts when whipping out several impressive gigabytes of uncompressed files to work on while they sit alone in front of a computer.
from R4,250 (2TB) | samsung.co.za
Pelican Memory Card Case
Any photographic type knows exactly why a Pelican case costs what it does. They might have something for that R100,000 camera but we doubt they’ve given the same consideration to the collection of SD and microSD cards rattling around their satchel. As per this gift guide, correct that oversight with the Pelican Memory Card Case. It’s a slim plastic protector that’ll keep those precious memories stored (and organised) until they get back to the laptop and the real work begins.
R1,000 | ormsdirect.co.za
DJI Osmo Mobile 6
No matter how lightly a creative type packs, there’s always going to be that one person at an event rocking little more than a lavalier microphone and a smartphone on a gimbal. Don’t let your friends envy that person. Let them be that person. The DJI Osmo Mobile 6 requires that a high-end smartphone is slotted in but once it’s in, balanced, and synced with the gimbal, it’s possible to capture and track targets, zoom, tilt, and pan with a single hand. What they’re doing with the other hand probably has something to do with something long and cylindrical. You know, a microphone.
R3,300 | istore.co.za
Rode Wireless Go II
Microphones don’t have to be wired and complicated. The Rode Wireless Go II, as the name suggests, is a wireless microphone system that’ll capture and transmit your audio with ideal clarity (provided you remember to switch the blasted thing on). Since your mate — you know, the person you’re reading this gift guide for — knows their way around audio-visual content creation, we’re sure that’s not going to be a problem.
R7,150 | takealot.com
GoPro Hero12 Black Creator Edition
What do you give the creator who has everything? You give it to them all over again, of course. GoPro’s Hero12 Black is an excellent action cam in its own right. The Creator Edition comes with enough extra bits to turn it into a portable vlogging studio. The Volta Battery Grip folds out into a serviceable tripod, there are flash and microphone attachments for the included housing, and there’s also one of GoPro’s Enduro batteries so they never miss a moment of what we’re sure is entirely captivating footage.
R16,000 | sportsmanswarehouse.co.za
Manfrotto Compact Advanced Tripod
Photography is hard enough when you have to lug around bags, cameras, and batteries. Why complicate matters by adding an overly heavy tripod into the mix? This Manfrotto effort weighs just 1.4kg, supports up to 3kg, and tucks away neatly when not in use. That goes for everything — the five-segment legs and the three-way pan and lilt head, which also folds down when they’re finished being arty with those expensive snappers they’re so proud of.
R2,200 | cameratek.co.za