African Photogragphy inspiration wanted!!!

In message
Hans-Georg Michna
wrote:

On Sat, 5 May 2007 22:45:00 +0100, the_niner_nation wrote:

I might just invest £40 in one of those 'gorillapod' things..it's kinda
like a bendy tripod that can curl its self onto branches, pipes etc

May not be too useful in a car, though, that has neither
branches nor pipes.

True, and from the pics I've seen of the gorillapod, I don't even
think the 'legs' are long enough to wrap around the roof 'rim' between
the hatch and the window.

Re Harlan's post, the OP should note that IME most safari vehicles,
esp minibuses, have horizontally opening windows.

Slainte

Liz

--
http://www.v-liz.com - Kenya; Tanzania; Namibia; India; Galapagos
Photo Gallery:
http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/g...emberID=165111

Hans-Georg Michna wrote:
Depending on what your demands of picture quality are, the
choices are these:

Poorest
vvvvvvv
* Cheap consumer zoom with telephoto converter
* Cheap consumer zoom
* Quality zoom with quality telephoto converter, ideally by the
same manufacturer and advertized as matching the lens
* Quality zoom
* Quality zoom with image stabilizer
* Quality fixed lense
* Quality fixed lense with image stabilizer
^^^^
Best

I agree with this assessment. A great starter wildlife
lens that gives great results on Canon DSLRs is the
300 f/4 L IS (about $1100) and add a 1.4x TC (even a Kenko
pro 300). In my opinion, IS makes the difference in
shooting from a safari vehicle, especially near sunrise
and sunset.

My safari images from Tanzania this January:
http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.africa

A colleague used a 300 f/4 on a 20D and got great results.
I took a 300 f/4 as my backup lens (I mostly
used a 500 f/4). The guy with the 300 f/4 and a
beanbag got some shots I missed because he could move
and point faster than I could with the 500 mm.

Roger

Liz Leyden wrote:
Hans-Georg Michna wrote:
the_niner_nation wrote:
I might just invest £40 in one of those 'gorillapod' things..it's kinda
like a bendy tripod that can curl its self onto branches, pipes etc

May not be too useful in a car, though, that has neither
branches nor pipes.
...
Re Harlan's post, the OP should note that IME most safari vehicles,
esp minibuses, have horizontally opening windows.

I think that the 'IME' part here is important: while I saw a few
vehicles that were of the minibus (w/poptop) variety, for the company
that I used, 100% of their safari vehicles had *no* windows (see page
10 of 73 of the .pdf link I previously provided). They also didn't
have doors either, but I digress.

My general observation is that its pretty straightforward to begin to
optimize when you're going back a 2nd or 3rd time to the same company,
same place, same vehicle, etc. While you can get it right on the
first try, that generally requires some prior applied experience and
knowning the right questions to ask, having a mentor who's been there/
done that, etc.

In general, I found that the ability to move & point very fast was
frequently an asset (directly for the subjects), plus (and I don't
know why) I found that for our itinerary, the majority of the
customers were not what I'd consider to be particularly serious nature
watchers/photographers, so it was more considerate to be able to
minimize shot preparation time (pre- and post-).

If I had to do my same itinerary again, the simplest "small" change
that I'd make would be to pack lightweight poly fill for my sandbag,
instead of trying to minimize its volume by packing it empty and
scrounging local fill material. I'd not bother with bringing a
monopod or compact/midsize tripod or any window/roof mounts. OTOH,
if I were to be going on a different itinerary where I knew that a
roof mount would be useful, then I'd take one (and also probably a
bigger lens), although this would also require paying for an extra
seat on the charter flight because it would clearly put me well
overweight on baggage limits (for the Cessna flights in-country, not
the commercial jets to get there).


-hh

"Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark)"
I agree with this assessment. A great starter wildlife
lens that gives great results on Canon DSLRs is the
300 f/4 L IS (about $1100) and add a 1.4x TC (even a Kenko
pro 300).

The trade-off that I went with was the Canon 70-200L f/2.8 IS with the
Canon 1.4x TC, which functionally makes it into (roughly) a 100-300 f/
4 IS zoom, with the "theoretical" capability to drop back to the f/2.8
if its getting really dark.

I say "theoretical" because while I had the capability, I don't recall
ever really using it on this trip...because it takes time, which you
often didn't have much of when in fading light. Instead, I jacked up
the ISO & sandbagged, which is for example the approach used for this
image, where the remaining ambiend light resulted in an Exposure
Value (EV) of only around 5:

http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/2006/tanzania/banda-
elephant(4141).jpg

EXIF:
Camera: Canon EOS 20D
ISO: 1600
Shutter/Apertu 1/30 @ f4
Focal Length: 98mm
Lens: EF 70-200L f2.8 IS USM with 1.4x


In my opinion, IS makes the difference in
shooting from a safari vehicle, especially near sunrise
and sunset.

Agreed. Particularly in fading light, time can easily be of the
essence, so a quick "move and shoot" from any reasonably well
supported position has value.

Overall, nothing's perfect...it would be nice to always have maximum
flexibility options, but that also requires a lot more money to clone
the additional hands to handle all of the stuff ;-)


-hh

I think that the 'IME' part here is important: while I saw a few
vehicles that were of the minibus (w/poptop) variety, for the company
that I used, 100% of their safari vehicles had *no* windows (see page
10 of 73 of the .pdf link I previously provided). They also didn't
have doors either, but I digress.


-hh, could you please post the pdf link again?
I have checked the thread but can't find it, perhpas my usenet server is not
so relaible, but I would like to see that pdf document.

My budget dosn't go to an 'L' series lens, the kit I am taking with me is
the 18-55mm kit lens, the 50mm 1.8 prime lens, the 90-300mm non-usm
telephoto and maybe a 28-135mm usm with IS



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"the_niner_nation" wrote:
[-hh wrote]
I think that the 'IME' part here is important: while I saw a few
vehicles that were of the minibus (w/poptop) variety, for the company
that I used, 100% of their safari vehicles had *no* windows (see page
10 of 73 of the .pdf link I previously provided). They also didn't
have doors either, but I digress.

-hh, could you please post the pdf link again?

Sure, no problem. Its at URL:
http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/2006...lbum-2006s.pdf

I also looked through my collection and grabbed a photo of one of the
jeeps that we rode in (Foxes Safari), since that's a topic in this
conversation. Its photo is he

http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/2006...jeep(4862).jpg

This was a 2 row ("4 customer"). They also had a larger one that had
3 rows in back which they typically only put 6 in, although I saw some
other companies that were stuffing in 9. One trick I found with
living with this vehicle was to pay attention to the tie-down straps
that dangle from the canvas top and whenver its convenient, tuck them
up around the bar so that they don't dangle down into your shot at the
most inconvenient time.


My budget dosn't go to an 'L' series lens, the kit I am taking with me is
the 18-55mm kit lens, the 50mm 1.8 prime lens, the 90-300mm non-usm
telephoto and maybe a 28-135mm usm with IS

I generally never took my telephoto zoom off of my main camera. I had
a WA on my backup body, but in general, probably shot at least 20:1
for Telephoto:Wide. In general, I didn't want to do lens swaps on the
road because of dust issues.

FWIW, I own the 28-135 IS and I didn't really even think about taking
it with me. In your case, I'd probably pack the 18-55 WA and the
90-300 telephoto, and expect that with the latter, to spend a lot of
time at ISO 400, and learning to work effectively with a sandbag (such
as the Kinesis) before the trip.


-hh

On Mon, 07 May 2007 20:10:48 -0700, Roger N. Clark (change
username to rnclark) wrote:

My safari images from Tanzania this January:
http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.africa

Roger,

very nice photos, thanks!

By the way, I once bought a Canon zoom lens, I think it was
70-300 mm, a small thing that I thought was surprisingly cheap.

I had always used Canon equipment before and had an SLR with
three lenses, including one very good tele-zoom.

But the new lens was pure fraud. It was a good zoom up to around
100 mm, but beyond that it simply enlarged the picture without
keeping it sharp. In other words, I might as well have used a
fixed 50 mm lens and used enlarged clippings.

I returned that lens instantly.

Today I use a digital compact camera, Panasonic, with a Leica
zoom lens. It is so much smaller, lighter, and also cheaper,
that I get more and better pictures from it overall, even though
it is inferior in some circumstances.

Hans-Georg
--
No mail, please.

My budget dosn't go to an 'L' series lens, the kit I am taking with me is
the 18-55mm kit lens, the 50mm 1.8 prime lens, the 90-300mm non-usm
telephoto and maybe a 28-135mm usm with IS

I've found with some really photographer-oriented travel companies
like www.shutterspeedtravel.com you don't have to worry so much about
what kit to take with you because they can lend you everything you
need. http://www.shutterspeedtravel.com/kit.asp. I went on one of
their photography expeditions last year and it was incredible because
they had so much extra kit with them. I got addicted to using beanbags
instead of tripods, and the best bit was the fact there were very few
people in each vehicle - 3 people in a 3 row jeep -so you got the
whole row to yourself, and didnt have to contend with people moving
around too much.
They also had all the equipment necessary for charging all the
batteries, downloading everything to computers and then we spent the
evenings looking at them on the large screen laptops. It was much
better than other trips Ive been on. No kids for a start!

Iwas just looking at the site to see if I could find a picture of the
vehicles we went in to give you an idea but I couldnt find one. But I
did find this: http://www.shutterspeedtravel.com/caption.html - haha!
Cute picture. That £300 prize could help as the holidays weren't cheap
but they were worth the extra to go with serious photographers.

Daisy Daisy ----@

wrote in message
oups.com...
My budget dosn't go to an 'L' series lens, the kit I am taking with me is
the 18-55mm kit lens, the 50mm 1.8 prime lens, the 90-300mm non-usm
telephoto and maybe a 28-135mm usm with IS

I've found with some really photographer-oriented travel companies
like www.shutterspeedtravel.com you don't have to worry so much about
what kit to take with you because they can lend you everything you
need. http://www.shutterspeedtravel.com/kit.asp. I went on one of
their photography expeditions last year and it was incredible because
they had so much extra kit with them. I got addicted to using beanbags
instead of tripods, and the best bit was the fact there were very few
people in each vehicle - 3 people in a 3 row jeep -so you got the
whole row to yourself, and didnt have to contend with people moving
around too much.
They also had all the equipment necessary for charging all the
batteries, downloading everything to computers and then we spent the
evenings looking at them on the large screen laptops. It was much
better than other trips Ive been on. No kids for a start!

Iwas just looking at the site to see if I could find a picture of the
vehicles we went in to give you an idea but I couldnt find one. But I
did find this: http://www.shutterspeedtravel.com/caption.html - haha!
Cute picture. That £300 prize could help as the holidays weren't cheap
but they were worth the extra to go with serious photographers.

Daisy Daisy ----@


Diasy, if it's not too intrusive, how much did that safari cost? their web
site dosn't quote any costings at all ( usually means it is expensive), but
from reading their website, you soooo get what you pay for :-)



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"Bill" wrote in message
oups.com...
"the_niner_nation" wrote:

...what i am asking in this post is if any of you have
uploaded your safari pictures could you please share the links with me,
as
I'd love to see the type of photo opps that *may* present themselves to
me
on my vacation...

Here are a couple of links to a trip we took in January to
Tanzania ... some cat pics, starting with lions (the serval catching
mice was the cat highlight though) ...

http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/ta..._2007/lion.htm ...
and a few bird pics ...

http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/ta...07/birds_1.htm

Follow the links and there's a narrative describing what we saw each
game drive in January. The Mara should offer similar opportunities.

Your 90-300 won't be long enough for the tight bird pics but it's
enough for the herbies and cats (sometimes the lions will lay by the
car to get shade, and click around a bit and you'll find a cheetah who
jumped onto the roof ... I needed a 24 mm to get him .

Have a good trip!

Bill


Wow...your photographs are absloutley superb and I really enjoyed looking at
them over and over again...thanks so much for sharing them, Bill :-)



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