It’s a jolly holiday here at National Parks at Night, as we once again bring you our annual gift guide. Cameras and tripods, bags and swag, coffee and mugs, and other this’s and thats. We spend all year looking for gear that you and your photographer loved ones might delight in finding wrapped with a ribbon and a bow. Delivering the list is our gift to you.
Of course holidays, particularly the end-of-year ones, are about more than gifts. They’re about spending time with others, enjoying precious moments of life together. We wish you many of those.
We hope you enjoy perusing these pages, as you dream about winter wishes for long, quiet nights filled with stars and photography, and with good books and memorable fireside chats.
You can view the gift guide in two ways: you can read it in the blog post below, or you can download the full-experience Gift Guide e-book. We encourage the latter, as the e-book version:
is more graphical
has lots more pictures
contains some deals, discounts and specials
Acratech
Leveling Base
A leveling base that goes between a ball head and its tripod has been the top support-kit accessory for the team at National Parks at Night. We use it to create seamless stitched panoramas as well as to easily level a shot without adjusting a tripod leg. The Acratech Leveling Base is now a permanent fixture on our tripods.
Aeropress
Coffee Maker Premium
Most night photographers are coffee freaks (us included!), and Aeropress is our go-to method for ensuring we get our prescribed caffeine smooth and without bitterness while on the go. The latest model, the AeroPress Coffee Maker Premium, levels up this amazing product from simple and down-to-earth to fancy and elite. Handmade from double-wall borosilicate glass, stainless steel and anodized aluminum, it’s a work of art—a showstopper that turns the kitchen counter into an elegant coffee station. You won’t find another method this compact and reliable to make coffee … anywhere.
Asterisk*
National Park Watches
Five parks are uniquely featured in the National Park Inspired Collection of Asterisk* Watches, and three of them embrace the night. With these timepieces, auroras are in constant motion at Gates of the Arctic, Arches has a cool day/night feature that rotates around Delicate Arch, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes is a beautiful night scene with flowing lava to showcase the passing of time, Channel Islands depicts a sea lion diving among the kelp, and Olympic is a stunning daytime celebration of a gushing waterfall. Keep time and stay tuned in to nature.
B&H Photo
Gift Card
Giving a gift is never stressful when you have a photographer in your life, because a B&H Gift Card is always the perfect present. Always. It’s the gift of choice. Let your photographer (or videographer, musician or gamer) pick any camera, lens, computer or whatever new doodad, thingamabob or doohickey they may need. Of course B&H will have it—they are the world’s biggest and best resource for all photo, video and image-making needs.
Bay Photo Lab
Wall Display Print
A photograph isn’t truly finished until it’s printed, and our favorite place to print is at Bay Photo Lab. A great photo always looks greater when printed large, and Bay shines with those big sizes, from 16x24 to 45x80. Choose a Wall Display archival print, available in various mounts on various surfaces for a custom feel and maximum impact.
BenQ
PhotoVue SW272Q HDR Monitor
BenQ’s outstanding 27" PhotoVue SW272Q monitor is an ideal size for editing photographs. The 2560x1440 native resolution helps keep our digital imaging tools the right size (as opposed to 4K displays that can make them too small). Via a single USB-C cable, this monitor provides 90-watt power to a laptop, plus a fine-coated reduced glare panel and 99 percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut in a sleek bezel design.
Benro
Rhino Tripod with VX30 Head
For a steady, rock-solid tripod kit, look no further. Boasting a 44-pound load capacity, the Rhino Carbon Fiber Three Series Tripod with VX30 Head combo from Benro can hold long lenses and heavy bodies—yet it weighs only 4.5 pounds. The dial panoramic head allows for panning from the base—a simple solution for single-row panos. The stylish carbon fiber legs fold up travel-style and have three positions with an auto-hold trigger. Or combine one of the tripod legs with the center column to form a full-featured monopod.
Bookshelf
Various Authors
In a world where we carry the entire knowledge of humankind in our pockets, in many ways books are still king. We are big fans of national park and photography tomes, and here are a few of our recent favorites:
Dusk to Dawn, 2nd Edition: A Guide to Landscape Photography at Night, by Glenn Randall
Feral: Losing Myself and Finding My Way in America’s National Parks, by Emily Pennington
Photographing the Night Sky (Memorial Edition), by Alyn Wallace
While We Slept, by Pete Mauney
Wilderness & Wonder: An Illustrated Guide to the National Parks, by Kenneth Crane, Joel Anderson and Ren Brabenec
Calibrite
Photo Kit
Take control of color, from capture to edit. This new Photo Kit from Calibrite includes both the ColorChecker Passport Photo 2 target and the Display Pro HL colorimeter. The former helps a photographer create profiles and custom white balance settings for all their cameras (astro-modified included!), and the latter helps with keeping a monitor’s brightness and color consistent. Both are essential tools for getting to the good part—applying creative vision.
Cameras
Canon, Nikon & Sony
This past year we saw some of our favorite and most popular cameras get some serious upgrades. All of them are a gift well worth giving.
The 45-megapixel Canon EOS R5 Mark II upgraded to a back-illuminated sensor that significantly reduces noise at higher ISOs.
Nikon made a major revamp with the Z6III by adding a partially stacked sensor to improve their class-leading high ISOs. A new grip and articulating LCD also give the camera a much better ergonomic experience.
Sony’s flagship Alpha 1 II powerhouse improved ergonomics with a deeper grip and a four-axis multi-angle high-resolution LCD. Key features for a night photographer are focus bracketing, pre-release capture and three stops of improved image stabilization.
Chimani
Chimani Pro Subscription
One of our favorite scouting apps! Chimani provides access to loads of information about all 63 national parks and more, all written by local experts. With the Pro Subscription, get the lowdown about photo opportunities, maps, trails, services, lodging and more, all without needing a data connection in the field.
Copper Moon Coffee
Dark Sky Blend
Every night photographer needs a morning pickup, and Indiana-based Copper Moon Coffee offers a dark-sky lover’s dark drink of choice. In particular, check out the Dark Sky Blend, with its touch of sweetness without the acidity. It’s a medium-dark, full-bodied coffee containing notes of lightly charred cocoa, blueberry, plum and nuts. Available whole-bean or ground. (Also check out their Stargazer blend.)
DXO
Nik Collection 7
This famed plugin package has long helped photographers solve picture problems and curate creativity. The latest release, Nik Collection 7, features improved local adjustment technology with new elliptical and polygonal tools for more accurate selections, as well as new luminosity range masks that offer higher levels of precision. Add to that a new plugin switcher that lets you seamlessly transition between apps, as well as tons of other additions and tweaks, and this may well be the most robust upgrade Nik has ever gotten.
HangTime Gear
Koala Smartphone Harness
The 1.2-ounce Koala 2.0 Super-Grip Smartphone Harness can save you from disaster when out in the field, or at home. Clip or clamp it to a belt, backpack or any other place to help protect your phone from falling to the ground. Compatible with most phones with or without cases. Eight cool colors available. Comes with both clip and clamp attachments. The 50-pound capacity wildly exceeds any phone’s weight.
Irix
15mm f/2.4 Lens
Irix lenses are well known as a classic choice for astro-landscape photography due to their sharpness and minimal coma, and their 15mm f/2.4 is perfect for photographing big starry skies over nighttime landscapes. Irix lenses are weather-sealed and feature a fully manual focus with a stiff, confidence-assuring focus ring. The Blackstone version features an infinity detent and focus lock. The Dragonfly version has a clicked or smooth adjusting aperture ring. Available in Sony E, Nikon F, Canon EF and Pentax K mounts.
Junlit
Night Light
Traveling for night photography often means sleeping in new, unfamiliar places, and the last thing a night photographer needs during the few hours they can sleep is to bang a knee on a hotel dresser on the way to the bathroom. Junlit Night Lights are perfect for travel. They’re small and lightweight, so this four-pack is easy to stow in luggage. The lights have three brightness settings, which allows you to see while not ruining your night vision, and they have three white balance settings so you can avoid cool light disturbing your alpha waves.
KabukiGlasses
KabukiGlasses 4x13 HD
The hands-free and autofocus KabukiGlasses 4x13 HD are a great new twist on our old binoculars, useful for anything from birding to night skies. These universal and slightly steampunk binocular glasses come in three varieties: normal vision, slight nearsightedness and strong nearsightedness.
Ledlenser
P6R Work
The Ledlenser P6R Work has just the right combination of qualities for light painting. It has six modes, but the unique feature is that it is programmable, allowing the user to select their two favorite modes and then cycle between just those most frequently used settings. It also has a “last used setting” recall, so if you turn it off at low power, it comes back on at low power. With an industry-leading color rendering index (CRI) of 90 and a color temperature of 4000 K, it’s nearly the perfect light painting tool.
LifeStraw
Steel Filter Straw
The further a photographer travels from home, the less sure they might be about the water they drink—especially in the wilderness. The LifeStraw Sip Reusable Steel Filter Straw provides an easy solution for hydrating with confidence from almost any water source. Whether the concern is contaminated water from a foreign city or forest stream, this filtered straw will remove microplastics, bacteria and parasites before the sip hits the lips. The straw is reusable and lasts for up to 1,000 liters of drinking. Slim, lightweight and comes in a sleek case that’s easy to pack in a camera bag.
McIntosh Mugs
Starry Night Mug
One of the ultimate night sky images ever created wasn’t even a photograph (gasp!) but rather a painting. Painted on canvas in 1889, Van Gogh’s masterpiece is now available on this hardy 19.5-ounce fine bone china mug. With the Van Gogh Starry Night Grande Mug, enjoy beautiful art in the morning while drinking coffee and dreaming of the night.
MODL Outdoors
Infinity Tool Straps
The stretchy, colorful Infinity Tool 2.0 Modular Straps are so versatile, there are uses for them everywhere. We’ve added the glow-in-the-dark version to our backpacks and tripods to hold water bottles, intervalometers, light stands and more. Link multiple straps together to form a longer strap, and the grippy, 70-pound weight capacity keeps even heavyish gear from slipping. (Hint: Order extras, because friends and family will steal them.)
National Park Service
Annual Pass
National parks (as well as national monuments, national scenic byways, national preserves, national seashores, et al.) offer some of the best places for night photography. Not all have entrance fees, but many do. The National Park Service’s America the Beautiful Annual Pass gets you into all of them and more. Better yet, buying a pass supports the parks, as 100 percent of the proceeds go directly toward improving and enhancing visitor services.
National Parks at Night
Night Photography Adventure Workshops
Photographers love little more than being out in the world making photographs, and it’s all the better when we can do it with friends, both old and new. That’s where our Night Photography Adventure Workshops come in. Send someone on what may well be the trip of a lifetime, photographing stars in some of the world’s wondrous places. Tickets are currently available for the following adventures.
Photograph auroras during the solar maximum under the unparalleled night skies of Iceland’s North Coast (April 11-19, 2025).
Come to the Aloha State for 6 nights of shooting dramatic coastline, bamboo forests, volcanic landscapes and more in Haleakala National Park (June 9-15, 2025).
Head to Alabama to explore a remnant of the U.S. Industrial Age, with 3 nights of private access to Birmingham’s Sloss Furnaces (September 25-28, 2025).
Learn the ins and outs of Lightroom and Photoshop at our Post-Processing Intensive workshop in Chicago (October 26-31, 2025).
Instructor Books
For national park and night photography knowledge, browse the books written by members of the NPAN team.
Night Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots, by Gabriel Biderman and Tim Cooper
The Magic of Light Painting, by Tim Cooper
Photographing National Parks, by Chris Nicholson
Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark, by Lance Keimig
Night Photo Summit
Virtual Conference Ticket
Over the winter weekend of January 24-26, 2025, over 300 photographers from across the United States and around the world gather virtually for the Night Photo Summit, three days of night photography education and inspiration. Over 30 speakers will engage with a passionate and dedicated audience with presentations that range from fundamentals to mid- and high-level post-processing, specialties such as auroras and light painting, and general topics such as dark sky preservation, astronomy, national parks and more. Attendees banter in chats and converse in networking rooms, and can win any of over $10,000 of giveaways during virtual parties. Tickets go on sale December 14.
Novoflex
KOPF2-Basic Geared Head
Ideal for exacting work, the KOPF2-Basic Modular Geared Head from Novoflex allows for micro-adjustments via a geared mechanism on two axes. The German engineering astounds—it is lightweight, strong and gosh it looks great on a tripod. The base features a locking panoramic motion and the top includes a quick-release clamp. This is certainly one the most drool-worthy tripod heads we have ever used. Also excellent for single-row panoramas and macro photography.
Palmly
Cosmic Orb
Bring home the cosmos with a laser-engraved crystal Cosmic Orb ball that can be used as a nightlight or lamp. Choose from the celestial scenes of Saturn, Galaxy, Solar System, Earth, Moon or Universe. The illumination comes from the base light, which can be run on AA batteries or plugged in via USB (power brick not included). Once turned on, the stars will shine brightly in the comforts of home.
PhotoPills
Danger Clouds! T-Shirt
We’ve all been there: ready for a great night of shooting stars, and we get outside to see the dreaded cloud cover. Show a healthy wariness of bad weather with a PhotoPills Danger Clouds! T-Shirt, comfy to wear indoors while waiting for the perfect night skies to appear—tomorrow!
ProGrade Digital
CFexpress Gold Memory Card
Night photographers who shoot loads of captures for time-lapses and star trails are sure to benefit from the 512 GB CFexpress 4.0 Type B Gold Memory Card from ProGrade Digital. This card provides read speeds of up to 3400 MB/s (which helps to quickly offload celestial sky image files to a computer) and write speeds of up to 3000 MB/s. ProGrade is our go-to memory card for reliability and speed. Their Gold cards have a minimum sustained write speed that is guaranteed not to drop below 850 MB/s.
Robert Decker
National Park Posters
Artist Robert Decker designed a massive and stunning collection of fine art National Park Posters that echo the WPA (Works Progress Administration) era of the 1930s and 40s. He has all the printed posters in Colorado with soy-based inks on “Conservation,” a recycled, domestically produced paper stock. Choose from among the 98 posters that Robert created to celebrate America’s greatest idea.
Shimoda
Carry-On Roller V2
Ideal for fitting into overhead luggage bins on an airplane, the Carry-On Roller V2 from Shimoda is a traveler’s best friend. If you want to get the gear off your back while traversing the airport, pull the internal camera unit out from the backpack and drop it right into this rolling bag. Or, pack that way from the get-go and stow the empty backpack in a suitcase to use once on location. Or just use it like any other rolling bag! The massive wheels are nearly indestructible, sure to get any photographer and their gear from Point A to Point B and beyond.
Spencer’s Camera
Astro Modification
To make images that have the “true” colors of bright reds and magentas in the night sky, consider getting a camera “astro modified.” This Astro Modification process can be confusing, and perhaps daunting, but the staff at Spencer’s Camera takes all the anxiety away and makes the process simple. They also provide advice and guidance, plus accessories for using the newly modified gear.
Tahr Equipment
Cap Strap
This goes under the category of “How did no one think of this before?” The Cap Strap is a strong metal ring that threads onto a Nalgene bottle so you can carry or hang it without stressing (and eventually breaking) the plastic cap tether that came with the bottle. Use your own carabiner or purchase one with the Cap Strap to connect it to a backpack strap, belt, tent and more. Stop stressing, hydrate more.
Uncommon Goods
National Park Explorer’s Fanny Pack
It might be hard to believe, but fanny packs are back! Whether they are worn across the shoulder like a sling or in their intended fanny spot, they make carrying essential hiking gear such as water and snacks super easy. Join the rejuvenation and celebrate your love of public lands with Uncommon Goods’ National Park Explorer’s Fanny Packs. They come in eight bright and bold national park designs for Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons, Joshua Tree, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion.
Venus Optics
20mm f/4 Shift Lens
When we’re photographing a night sky, we’re always looking up—because, ya know, that’s where the sky is! The downside of looking up is that it creates perspective distortion in an image. Oftentimes that’s irrelevant, but it can be disruptive when photographing buildings, lighthouses, tall trees, giant cactuses, etc. The fix is to shoot with a shift lens, such as the Laowa 20mm f/4, which offers crystal-clear images free of perspective distortion with nearly nonexistent comatic aberration. Level up by shifting up!
Wander Club
National Park Tokens
Admittedly we stamp, sticker and collect lots of ephemera from the places we visit. The Wander Club U.S. National Park Tokens give us another fun way to celebrate and showcase the parks we’ve been to. These beautiful color pieces look wonderful on the company’s new Wanderchain, which can hold 35 tokens. You can also roll into a park with extra tokens and give them away to first-time park visitors. A great gift for kids to start getting excited about visiting more of our national wonders.
Wondery Outdoors
Bucket List Bottle
The Parks of the USA Bucket List Bottle holds 32 ounces and comes in a variety of colors to keep our water cold on all the hikes. But the real fun is stickering. All 63 national parks are etched around the bottle. Once you’ve visited a park, place the color sticker over the etching. It’s a super-fun way to stay hydrated while checking off those parks.
ZWO
Seestar S50 Telescope
One of the coolest things we saw at the 2024 Nightscaper Photo Conference was the Seestar S50 All-in-One Smart Telescope. Tell the app which celestial object you want to capture and it sends the celestial coordinates to the telescope. Easy to set up, effortless to use.
Note: Remember, this gift guide is also available as a free downloadable e-book, with lots more photos and a ton of discount codes. Download yours today by clicking the image below.
