Checking out the Photo Mode on Hogwarts Legacy

I can vividly remember myself actively wondering during a number of Hogwarts Legacy streams why there hasn't been a photo or video mode included with the game thus far. As the game took place somewhere in the late 1800's, the idea of including some kind of a magical 'lanterna magica' or 'pre-prototype photo camera' really appealed to me. Well, low and behold, I guess I wasn't the only one who really wanted this mode, as WB rolled out an update last night with a number of QoL improvements, free items, and of course: a fancy new photo mode!

I had downloaded the update the night before but because of sleep deprivation did not check out the new game mode yet (something with watching youtube shorts all night, being braindrained and deciding it was a good idea to stream at 7am that same morning..) That is why I decided to do a stream tonight around 7.30PM and check out the new photo mode live!

During the stream I check out all the different options the photo mode has on offer, plus I will try to answer the lingering question: are the shots taken in the Nintendo Switch version (known for texture popins and antialiasing) usable and is it possible to make frame-by-frame animations?

Enjoy.

Takeaways from the stream:

The world freezes in photo mode, and is more or less a 'captured moment'. Trees don't sway in the wind, fire doesn't move around randomly, people do not move, etc. This makes photo mode less useful for video capturing (with a capture card for the switch version at least, since capturing video snippets is prohibited for some odd reason in the switch version of the game)
Photo mode is mainly only interesting for taking photo's for photo-based game art projects or for frame-by-frame stop motion animation, as long as the project does not mind the world around that has come to a complete standstill
While the Switch version is not the best version to choose because of texture popping, lower texture/model quality in general and antialiasing, using an 'upscaler' can counter some of these issues to help you generate good looking results.
No grain option unfortunately
Depth of fields 'range' is somewhat unpredictable: in most cases you really have to be close to the object on the foreground to make sure its blurry if you are placing your focus on something in the background. To me it feels its a bit 'off', but at least it works.
The camera can move away from the player much further in the overworld than inside Hogwarts for some odd reason. I would've kind of expected for this to be at least the same

Here are some of the images created over the course of the stream, all coming directly from the game: