five photo gift ideas under $50
It’s no secret that consumer spending has slowed dramatically in America, right on the cusp of the holiday shopping season. Consumers are being more conservative with purchases and credit is tightening. This Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) is known as Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year and expectations are always high, despite the conditions.
While I would enjoy seeing a brand new DSLR in the hands of every prophotolife reader this season that seems pretty unlikely. Just for the sake of discussion, I set a photo gift target of $50 or less and thought about what I would value most at that price point. Here’s what I came up with:
  |
Sensor Swab Digital Survival Kit
A Tiffen Circular Polarizer Filter
A lot of photographers know the value of a polarizer, especially for darkening blue skies and saturating colors. Ahhh, you say, that can all be done in Photoshop now. Yes, this is true…to some extent. One thing the polarizer does that’s special is it can eliminate glare and reflections on surfaces like glass, water and metal. That’s something that can only be done at the time of exposure and only with the help of a polarizer.
 |
Holga 120N Medium Format Camera ($33). Yes, it’s a sentimental favorite. It does take 120 film that requires processing, which adds to the cost. But the experience and the look of the images is worth it for multitudes of art photographers and photo students worldwide. A simple plastic camera, film and no LCD screen: it’s a different way of thinking.
Set of 3 QP Cards for white / black / grey balance ($13). If you want accurate color balance in your images it helps to have a quality gray card to balance to. These QP cards are small, durable and come as a set that will last long time with just a little bit of care. Shoot one frame with the card in the shot, balance the gray to neutral in your processing software and then apply that to all similar exposures for more accurate white balance.
  |
Shoe Mount Multiclamp
Let me know if you have any other “under $50″ ideas you’d recommend. Hey wait a minute! I just remembered a couple of budget items that should have made the list. Don’t forget the clamp light and the stick in a can. 
And if you do have the budget for a new DSLR or that dream lens, congratulations, it’s always fun to add a new addition. I’m sure site sponsor Calumet Photo would appreciate your consideration when you’re looking for a place to buy, so check out the Huge Holiday Sale at Calumet Photographic! 11.26.08 thru 12.01.08. They offer discount prices and professional service, a rarity these days.
Well, there is also the Calumet Studio Clamp (I think Manfrotto makes a similar one too), a decent battery tester, a set of eneloop batteries that don’t lose their charge so quickly so you can always have a set ready when you don’t have time or spare outlets for charging but you don’t want to spend a fortune on non-rechargeables over the years. Oh, and you can’t have enough CTO/Plus Green/ND gels and Gaffer Tape. Other things that come to mind are a reverse mounting ring for shooting macros, all sorts of flash sync cords and adapters, those uber-cheap foldable 5-in-1 reflectors off eBay, compact flash cards, smaller umbrellas, umbrella swivels and all sorts of low-price stands and clamps for leightweight travelling.
Hi Jim,
my favourite Item from your list would be the Holga. I guess shooting with it is huge fun. And this camera or the other Holga and Lomo cameras with special lenses (e.g. fisheye) or maybe a pinhole camera lead me to another gift idea. I guess it would be even more fun for a passionate photographer (and hopefully not just for me as a chemist and hobby photographer) to really go back to the roots and develop the film yourself. So my additional ideas are a developing tank and the chemicals for developing. Might be a creative alternative to a chemistry kit for the young ones too.
Now I Just need to find a way to get the link to this page to my relatives without being too obvious
Does a polarizing filter really help with reflections on metal? I thought just reflections on surfaces of non-conducting materials under brewster’s angle yield polarized light which can be blocked by such a filter. So for reflections on metal surfaces it should be nothing more than a ND.
Greetings from germany and you’re doing a great job blogging your real life experience in the world of phototgraphy! Thanks for sharing.
Karsten
Hamburg, Germany
[...] This gift guide is for items under $50.00. Again, US dollars, but some nice ideas.http://www.prophotolife.com/2008/11/26/five-photo-gift-ideas-under-50/ [...]
1″ spring a-clamps from the big orange box (Home Depot), they’re currently holding half of my studio together! At $1 each 50 is probably excessive so maybe a dozen clamps and a preorder on the new Joe McNally book?
How about one of those awesome beanbag tripods that work anywhere? As an outdoors and street photographer, I would be lost without it. There is even one variety that fits over your car window…and I bet it is something that would be a pleasant surprise.
Calumet cut back on their sponsorship, or don’t they stock those items? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a link to Amazon.com here before for products.
A few other things that could be useful… Memory cards, LED flashlight for the camera bag and gift certificates. I like to shoot outdoors a lot, so I’d welcome any kind of warm clothing for going out in the snow to shoot.
The light stand and clamp you have in your entry would be extremely useful as would any convertible umbrellas. I still haven’t bought a radio trigger for my flash yet. I’m still leaning toward the Skyports.
Karsten, memory tells me you’re definitely right when it comes to polarizing unfinished metal / speculars / reflected light sources. They work more like a mirror but, I must say, I couldn’t have come up with your great technical reference. I should have said “painted” or “finished” metal surfaces and will make that update.
Looking at your lists I now understand why we had so much stuff when packing the studio. I really like wandering Big Lots and the other discount stores for clamps, cords, tape and little stuff. I always spend a couple of bucks each trip.
Hey, John, it’s good to hear from you. I second your notion on warm outdoor clothing. It has me thinking about gloves with fingers that pull down for the shutter and dials.
And no, no cutbacks from Calumet. I just did a little comparison with Amazon since they pull together so many vendors (Calumet Photographic actually sells through Amazon, also). In the overall scheme of things it’s pretty tiny but I found the Holga for a couple of bucks less on Amazon and they had better stock on one of the other small items. Once you start digging around the massive Amazon.com catalog it’s hard to pull away!
I’ve been preoccupied with my career lately, trying to update my skill set. One result of that is I managed to get a major computer upgrade which is a major benefit to my photography hobby. I went from an Athlon XP 2700+ w/ 1Gb RAM to a Core 2 Quad (2.33Ghz) and 4Gb RAM. It’s a very nice change.
With memory prices the way they are now, a 2 to 4Gb memory upgrade fits nicely in the $50 range.
I’ve thought about those kinds of gloves too. You can probably find them in your favorite hunting/shooting supply store.
Looks like it is time for the lightstand, clamp and umbrella. You link for the multiclamp has them plus a white umbrella with removable backing all together for about $65ish. Thanks for the links, Jim.
[...] was checking out Profotolife’s list of cheapo photo gifts and one of the suggestions was a set of grey cards, and that reminded me I always wanted to do a [...]
Jim, you get an A+
Always considering your target audience so thoughtfully.
From “stick in a bucket” to “the $50 gift ideas”, I appreciate how you are a pro but never exclude those without a pro budget
Keep up the good work!
Craig
The cleaning kit is one of the best investments I think. When I was looking to buy my first DSLR I saw many comments in blogs about NEVER touching the sensor, always send it off to the manufacturer. What a complete rip off. For the price of shipping to a service center you can have a cleaning kit that will do the same thing (and you can GUARANTEE it will be clean, something the service center won’t do) and you lose the ability to take photos for 10 minutes instead of days to weeks! A local shop in Boise quoted me $50 for ONLY the sensor, the focus screen and general camera cleaning was extra.
I will say though to spend the extra and get the Sensor Wand version. The swabs/pads are one-time use, and I would have been through the swabs in a couple months max. With the wand you just wrap it with a new Pec-Pad (from the $7/100 count pack) and clean as needed. It took over 2.5 years to use up the pads (I use them for lenses too) and the bottle of fluid is still half full.
[...] five photo gift ideas under $50 Pro Photo Life More stuff for the holiday shoppers — all of it under a very reasonable $50. [...]
[...] pro photo life – five photo gift ideas under $50 [...]
Leave your response!
Search Prophotolife.com
Recent Articles
Most Popular Posts
Further Reading
Pages
Categories
Archives
Recent Comments
Most Commented
Tags