Gift Suggestions for Photographers: Film and Digital

This video is produced by Matt Day, he runs through 10 suggestions for holiday gift ideas for the photographer in your life.  Chances are, if you’re a photographer, you have photographer friends. If you need some suggestions of what to get for them, Matt’s list is a great place to start. While the list doubles for film and digital shooters, it does favor the film photographer. 

Among the list that Matt presents, the one that sticks out to me the most are photobooks. Some suggestions from Matt include work by Annie Leibovitz, Danny Clinch, and Vivian Maier.  To that, I would add a couple of my own: work by Bill Cunningham, Brandon Stanton, and the classic Ansel Adams. If you like Photoshop, Jerry Uelsmann was Photoshopping before Photoshop was a thing. Lastly, a few days ago I ordered Magnus Nilsson’s photo book as I’m big fan of his cookbook and his style so I went for it. The book contains wonderful photographs from Magnus' Nordic culinary pilgrimage as well as essays to accompany them. 

For me and some of my friends, film is by and large the most practical gift. Matt suggests HP5 for B&W film and Portra 400 for color negatives. Personally, I prefer and would suggest Tri-X and Portra 800 for black and white and color negatives, respectively. And for those that have never tried slide film, it’s a must. While slide film is a bit more tricky to deal with and as such, more susceptible to failure, there is nothing else like it when it works out. My personal favorites are Ektachrome (only available in 35mm at the time of writing) and Provia.

If you think something else would be a good addition to the list, let me know in the comments.