9/16/2023 0 Comments Luminous landscape sunsetRemember, you can’t move to compensate for distance so your lenses have to do it for you. Or a Bee-eater suddenly alights on a branch close by….and so on. That leopard in the distance needs the 300mm – but in moments he’s so close you need a short lens. Things can happen fast and you may simply not have time to change lenses. This is for two reasons – speed and dust. I hardly used the 24-70mm at all – a few landscapes, especially cloudscapes, but landscape photography is hard to do from a vehicle on a road or trackĭo take two camera bodies, not just in case of breakdown, but because you’ll want to use both. (I don’t own a 100-400mm zoom, but it might be just the ticket.) Next time I’d take my 400mm DO, though carting it around will be difficult. It was also good for animals like rhino – if you’re lucky enough to find one – because you likely won’t be very close to them. I used my 300 f4 (very light) with the converter and it was right on most of the time. Elephants, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, Cape Buffalo, impala and so on can all be approached quite closely (within feet in some cases) and a long lens is a liability.īut if you’re into birds too, as I am, I’d recommend 400mm. I found the 70-200mm IS the single most useful lens and took 70% or more of my shots with it. (Also, the good ones will turn off their engines the moment you stop, to avoid vibration.) You won’t need a lot of lenses – I took just a 24-70mm zoom, a 70-200mm IS and a 300mm IS with a 1.4X converter. Take image stabilized lenses if you possibly can, though resting your camera on the roof of the vehicle is quite practical, especially with the beanbags our drivers supplied. Serengeti Twins, Canon 1Ds, 300mm IS 1/250 at f11. This is a great idea anyway because they know just where the best sightings are likely to be, and the better ones have radio contact with each other so they can be alerted to unusual or rare sights. (We saw 39 lions in the Serengeti alone, and they were all hunting!) You cannot drive yourself – you must have a registered guide. Apparently the authorities have found that tourists’ getting eaten by the local wildlife is not good for business. Travel in the national parks is done in four-wheel drive “pop top” Land Rovers or Toyota Land Cruisers and it is expressly forbidden to get out of the vehicles except in a few designated places – and even then the guides get out first to check for lions and other predators. (In fairness, I must say that several in our party did leave stuff in hotel rooms and checked baggage and did not have any problems.) There is even a sign in Nairobi Airport that warns of pilferage of checked luggage, so take your cameras as cabin baggage. All the safari operators we met warned us repeatedly not to leave expensive gear in hotel rooms. ![]() Don’t take more gear than you can carry with you at all times. Sunset, Mount Mera, Canon 1D, 300mm IS with 1.4X, 1/350 at f8. We visited Tarangire, the Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Manyara parks in Tanzania, and Amboseli and Samburu in Kenya. My wife and I traveled through Kenya and Tanzania this winter, and our experiences may be useful to those readers who are joining Michael’s trip to Africa next winter. After reading Scott Robinson’s excellent article Digital in the Desert, I thought I’d add to it with some of my observations on shooting in East Africa, where conditions are somewhat different.
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