Thoughts on photo gear for my African safari

Martin Weiss
Jul 25, 2017 · 6 min read

For my wife and I, taking safaris in Africa was a long standing dream. We spent years saving for and researching out trip, so when the time for the trip came, I wanted to have the best results possible from my photography. Our trip was organized by AMA Waterways that included a water-based portion on the Chobe River in Namibia and lots of days of game drives in Botswana and Tanzania. I thought I’d share my experience for the benefit of others who might be taking such a trip.

Last year, I took the Upper Amazon trip (from Lindblad Expiditions) so I had some experience to build on. On this trip, I traveled with a Sony a6300 and the versatile 18–200mm f3.5 lens. This proved to be a lightweight and relatively compact setup that worked reasonably well, except for very distant subjects. Using low ISO and as high an f-stop as possible allowed me to do some reasonably close cropping in Photoshop. Here are some samples at various crop levels:

For the Africa trip, I sought better results. I already had the excellent 70–300mm A-mount G-master lens (f4.5). For this, I upgraded to a Sony a6500 because of the internal stabilization and purchased the EA3 Adapter to convert from A mount to E mount. Since the lens is designed for a full frame camera and the a6500 is APS-C, the optical cropping gives you an equivalence of 450mm at the long end. The EA3 supported most of the functions, though acquiring focus sometimes meant starting at the 70mm end and zooming in. Also, some of the focus assisting technologies, such as viewfinder magnification, did not work. Still the auto focus produced sharp results that I sometimes had to tune manually.

To gain sharpness in focus (and hopefully compensate slightly for the relative slowness of the lens), I tried two monopods, since it would be impossible to set up a tripod in a boat or safari jeep. The Manfrotto 682B (with retractable legs) was a heavy but good choice. It was quick to adjust to various heights, which I liked and was very stable. The legs seemed like they would be a good idea, but I rarely used them because there usually wasn’t enough room for them, my large feet and long legs. There were plenty of places to lean the monopod when I wasn’t using it. A cheaper and lighter option was the Mountainsmith Trekker FX Walking Stick and Monopod. This was stable and doubled as a walking stick, as advertised. The only downside is that it was slower and more cumbersome to adjust the height. Both the Manfrotto and the Mountainsmith could be adjusted so that they could rest on the floor or wheelwell (of the jeeps). In fact, both would probably have been short enough to rest on the seat between my legs, but I never found that to be useful.

In the end, I believe that the monopods gave me enough stability to gain a bit more sharpness from my photos, and the longer lens definitely paid off. Here are some samples (various crop levels):

Sample images using a6500, EA3 and 70–300mm lens with monopod

Sometimes, the best shots are from a standing position and the monopod really gets in the way. I found this to be particularly true in the jeeps. I used the Manfrotto 323 RC2 quick release system (get attachment plates for each piece of photo gear for quick interchanges!), which allowed me to quickly release the camera from the monopod and snap it back in. This particular mount can be adjusted so that the camera did not have to be perpendicular to the monopod, which was particularly useful to shoot birds in trees while keeping the monopod vertical. Tilting the monopod would have been awkward and unworkable in most instances.

The other thing … photo opportunities don’t wait to for you to change lenses. Sometimes, the 70–300mm lens was too long for the opportunity and switching to the 18–200mm would have taken too much time. Several of the others on the safari struggled with this. I happened to have packed a Sony RX100m3 to use as a “street photo” camera; this camera was very useful as a supplement when the lens was too long and produces excellent images.

I did not have a bean bag camera rest and did not miss it. On the jeeps, I could usually rest my lens on the roof, and on the boats, there would have been no place to rest it. The windows on the jeep slid horizontally, so the bean bag would have been hard to use.

What would I change? I would only bring one monopod (the Mountainsmith). If I could bring myself to part with the $$, I would bring the 100–400mm F4.5 E-mount lens … on the a6500, this would be a whopping 600mm equivalent at the long end. Lighting was generally good, so I wouldn’t worry too much about investing in fast lenses.

Martin Weiss

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I am Assoc. Dean at the Sch. of Info Sci at U. Pitt. Research in dynamic spectrum assignment

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