African Safari/Photography Kit

[hubell]

Heading to Africa (Botswana and Zambia) for a few weeks and debating what to take for photography. My IQ180 medium format kit is staying home. I have a Sony A7R and a number of Sony FE lenses, including a Sony 70-200 FE zoom. The drawback to the A7R is that the autofocus performance is just "ok." I was thinking of renting an A7II or A7S. The A7II apparently has much better autofocus than the A7R; the A7S has superb low light capabilities, which worked wonderfully for me on a trip to India last Fall in difficult lighting conditions, and I will be out early in the morning and late afternoon and even into the night in Africa. I could take the A7R as a backup and keep my 24-70 FE zoom on it. I am also thinking of leaving the 70-200 FE zoom at home and renting an A mount long zoom with an adapter....a Sony 70-400 zoom, a Sigma 50-500 zoom or a Tamron 150-600 zoom. I may be wrong about the need for such a long lens as I am staying at camps where the safari drives can go offroad. I also don't know how well such a long lens would work without a tripod. I am hoping that a beanbag setup would work in the safari vehicles.
TIA for any advice.

[Miles]

I visited South Africa recently and stayed at locations where they could take you off road.  I found that 300mm was more than enough lens and often switched to a 70-200mm.  The animals are conditioned to the safari vehicles and pay no attention to them getting within the range of these lenses.  I recognize the area you are going to is quite different, thus I would check with your outfitter to see what they recommend. 

Good luck!

[stever]

it depends on your priorities.  mine are eclectic including birds and small animals (at night if on offer) and have found that it's best to be ready with two and preferably three setups.  Most used is the 5D3 and 70-200, but the 7D and 100-400 gets good use for distant and smaller subjects -600mm is not too long.  It's nice to have a backup body with 24-105 (or similar) for landscapes with/without wildlife.

Changing lenses in vehicles in the dust when something exciting is happening is a real bummer.  And unless you have an assistant and your own vehicle, big primes mostly get in the way.  Stabilized zooms hand-held and with a bean bag work best for the average photographer.

The majority of shots don't require fast autofocus, but it's really disappointing when action happens and you miss it.

[drmarkf]

Recently returned from 3 weeks in SA and Malawi. including 7 days on game drives, and we've been to the Kruger park in the past. Some thoughts that I hope are useful:

Dust is a real issue (take 2 bodies and don't change lenses while out on the vehicle); a lot of good shots on game drives are in the 50-100mm full-frame range; long lens requirements vary greatly according to which game park you're in.

Different countries & game parks have either open or closed vehicles - find out which you'll be using in advance. In an open vehicle handholding is usually the way to go IMHO, taking advantage of the back of seats etc if you can. To get good shots of animals reacting to you but before they run away (usually in in scrubby/forested parks) you have to be really quick, and I find beanbags and monopods just get in the way. In open vehicles you can often get nice and low, which gives a good perspective so you aren't looking down on the animals all the time (so generally I recommend sitting in the front row of seats close to the driver, rather than right up in the air on the back, which a lot of first-timers seem to like)

On the other hand if you are standing up and poking out of the top of closed vehicles in a big open game park then most people use beanbags, but I've not yet been to that sort of place.

This time I took only m4/3 mirrorless kit, partly because of advancing musculoskeletal frailties [!] but mainly because I wanted to combine 'travel' and 'wildlife' shooting with a light plane flight where the total baggage weight limit was 15kg.

I took 2 Olympus E-M1 bodies and Samyang 7.5 fisheye, Panasonic 12-35 f2.8, Oly 40-150 f2.8 and 1.4 converter and 45 f1.8 prime. I could have used longer reach than the FF 420mm gave, but not that often. With batteries, charger, cards, blower & other general hand baggage travel stuff this came to under 6kg in a LowePro 202 slingshot bag.

Focus peaking and manual focus was fantastically useful when the animals were peering through grasses and branches. I used variable ISO quite often, max 1600ASA which was just about OK early and late on the drives (but I hope for better from the "E-M1 II"). I'm not a bird photographer so didn't try BIF, but I did get some nice shots of birds on sticks and the ground.

If you're not on a specific photo safari, try to find a ranger who's keen on photography: I was really lucky in the Madikwe reserve in S Africa, where the guy we had understood very well what I was looking for, and I got some really nice contre jour shots & reflections (plus had good photo conversations, too).

Have fun!