ℹ️ - Death Stranding 2's New Photography Features

Developer: Kojima Productions

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Platform: PS5

Initial Release: 26th June 2025

(Digital copy provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment)

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When Sony kindly sent me a copy of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach to try, I was obviously keen to see what updates there may have been to the game's photo mode. After an earlier reveal of an instant camera feature which see Fragile and friends posing naturally for some Polaroid-style shots, it was only natural to hope that the main photo mode might also be upgraded with similarly clever features.

That's not really the case though: the UI is pretty much the same, aside from a fancy flourish as the text appears, and the majority of the features remain entirely unchanged. This includes the wonderfully huge zoom lens, a nice auto-focus & aperture setup, as well as effects like exposure, contrast, sensor noise, and lens distortions that all do a good job.

Crucially though, the camera hasn't changed either and it is still an awkward orbit camera with a major aversion to terrain collision. Getting the right composition can be frustrating then, but there are some new things that might put more of a smile on the face of in-game photographers – some are major updates, other much more subtle.

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Custom Lighting

Let's get straight to the most important new feature in Death Stranding 2's photo mode: it now has a full suite of custom lights. Up to 3 lights can be placed around Sam to set up your shot, each with adjustable intensity, spread, and softness of the beam.

They can be set to any colour too; in fact, every light is bright red by default. That makes it easy to identify at least, though you've got to manually desaturate every time to get to plain white.

The lighting UI is also an interesting one with a ring around the character that shows the distance and orbit of the light, and a cone of emanating circles that depict its shine path. That's needed because the lights are helpfully directional and can be aimed at any angle, although quite why the circles have to flash constantly and obscure the actual effect, I do not know!

More of 'Things'

This is a deliberately vague one because it doesn't cover just one 'thing'. There are several actually, and all of them already existed in the previous photo mode, only now there are more of them...

A few extra colour filters take their number to 17, while more than 24 frames include new designs such as "Lots of Likes" and a mock-up social media post as well as some location-specific ones to unlock. It's nice to see that the movie poster overlay has been refreshed too, and there are a lot more logos to choose from, once again with customisable colour and position.

Character posing options also retain the great ability to tilt Sam's head and body around, or to automatically face the camera. These apply to the majority of the preset poses and, you guessed it, there are now even more of them.

Given the right circumstances, Lou and Dollman – himself an entertaining addition to the game – get a wide selection of poses and facial expressions too. The only thing really missing is an option to rotate characters on the spot or reposition them slightly, that would be the finishing touch here.

Re-ordered UI Tabs

I know I said that the UI is the same, and it is mostly, but some of the tabs have been moved around to change the workflow a little. Whether you find this a help or a hindrance will probably come down to personal preference, or the type of shot you're working on.

The camera and lens options are now on the second tab for example, not the first, but do better lead into the closely related Brightness / Filter and Lens Effect tabs. If you plan to pose characters before working on the composition though, you'll have to cycle through the UI to do that.

'X' to Capture

Elsewhere on the UI, you might notice the button legend includes a camera icon that tells you to use the X (sorry, Cross) button to take a photo. With the DualSense controller already having a dedicated button for this, it may seem unnecessary, but this one is pretty cool.

Shots saved with this new button press are not only saved to the console storage, but are added to the in-game map as well. To view these saved shots and the locations they were taken, just head to the Ring Terminal and choose Social Strand Service where you can find a gallery. I would be surprised if future updates don't make this more interactive with the ability to see friends' photos here too.

Private Room Decoration

Another use for the shots captured using the X button is that they become available to use when customising your private room. Apart from the one on the DHV Magellan, this applies to all private rooms at the various in-world facilities which now sport full-wall display screens ready for decoration.

Simply look towards the main wall in front of or behind Sam and hit Δ to customise. Any of your Social Strand Service shots, along with a few default options, can then be selected, scaled and repositioned as a wallpaper that wraps around the room.

Save Settings

Technically, this feature was already in the first game as a basic option, though the functionality is now much improved. Upon exiting the photo mode, a confirmation pop-up will ask if you'd like to save the current settings. Doing so will ensure that all options including filters, aspect ratio, and custom lights will be just as you left them the next time you enter photo mode.

This is obviously ideal for a series of similarly styled shots, or just for setting up your preferred baseline values, at least until the game is rebooted. Having the choice on whether to save the settings each time means you can also try a totally different setup and still revert back to your previous one by just pressing 'No'.

The Instant Camera

So, finally onto the feature that generated so much interest before the game arrived. It looks amazing at first glance but dare I say that it's actually a bit of a disappointment.

The instant camera isn't available from the start, and you'll have to progress quite far into the game to get it. Only after completing Main Order 029 at the end of Chapter 7 will you receive the camera as a gift from The Mechanic.

From then on, the camera (a retro vision in orange) can be used from your private room onboard the DHV Magellan, much to the delight of Fragile, Rainy, and Tomorrow who will gladly pose in any of the five fixed locations around the ship. Head to the bridge, and other crew members will join in too.

Fantastically motion captured though they are, the sequences turn out to be a bit shallow and repeat without any real potential for organic variation. I love the idea of this character interaction, but this is very much a clever novelty than anything actually useful. You don't even get a saved copy of the instant photos, not that I've found anyway.

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