Holidays are a great way to create memories, which is why every bag packed for a trip away inexplicably has had a camera in it ever since its invention. They are such valuable things. Having them physically as polaroids or using tools like My Photo Album online to make keepsakes are essential, but so is keeping the photos digitally. But if you really want to take your memories to the next level, you should read our guide. We’re breaking down the best lenses and accessories to take with you to get the best holiday pics.
Ring light
This is the basics of taking photos now. Thanks to the rise of the influencer and the content creator ring lights have become so in demand that there are affordable versions appearing on the shelves in bigger supermarkets.
And it is the most basic and fundamental rule of taking a good picture: you need good light. Only not everywhere allows for good lighting, so you can replicate it with a ring light.
A ring light is also better than simply putting on the big light in the room, which will illuminate everything, perhaps too much. A ring light focuses on the subject and doesn’t spread around the area so that you pop out from your background, but the background is still discernible.
Anamorphic
Anamorphic lenses are all the rage when it comes to the cinematic feel of an image. To put it simply, it was used to great effect in the latest Toy Story installment, where Bo Peep’s carnival world is turned into clusters of blurry circle shapes and moody waves of overlapping lights rather than the sharp neon the scene would regularly demand.
It is a great tool for making the dark seem magical, where instances of use around a bonfire, watching fireworks, or walking city streets turn into a dazzling display behind the subject of your camera.
There is also a trick that went viral where you can cut out a small shape in a piece of cardboard and hold it over the lens when you shoot to see all the lights turn into that shape, like a heart or star.
Deep and shallow focus
If you are someone who likes to get every detail of a scene, perhaps wishing a photo could capture what your eye is seeing exactly, you can look into a deep focus lens.
These are a great option for someone who loves landscapes and wants to see every bit of seafoam or every leaf on a tree.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can get a really short-focus lens and apply your own shallow depth of focus on your images. Think of the hit television show, The Handmaid’s Tale for an example of how it would look. That is a deeply intimate story of Offred’s life, where she is supposed to be seen but not really observed, and the shallow depth of focus keeps that intimacy by blurring out the world around her and keeping focus sharply where it needs to be, particularly when she is seen under her bonnet, trying to stay meek.
If you’ve got something you want to keep the focus well and truly on, you can use shallow focus to blur everything around it, be that a person or an artifact, etc.
