Technical Information and other Ramblings

We had some strange requirements on this vacation, cold rainy northern Scotland to warm savannah of Tanzania in one trip. A month of clothes and personal gear. And we haven't even talked about the extra luggage to bring back gifts for people. Neeley and I carried a lot of equipment on this trip, some of it was even useful. The pringles can is included to help so scale (pringles being a universal size indicator). Camera gear was my primary concern for our safari. This was not a trip that I was expecting to be able to do a couple times a year, so I wanted to make sure that I had the equipment that I felt was required.

For that reason, I packed quite a bit of camera gear for us to use: Canon 20D Body (with grip) & Canon Rebel XT Body Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6 L IS Sigma 120-300 f2.8 Sigma 50-500 f4-6 Canon 80-200 f2.8 L Canon 17-85 f4-5.6 IS Canon 17-55 f2.8 Canon 10-22 f3.5-4.5 Sigma 2x TC & Kenko 1.4x TC Canon 550ex & 420ex Flashes Neeley carried the Rebel XT, 17-85, and the 420ex in her bag. While I carried all the remaining equipment in a Kata HB-207 backpack. In additional to the camera gear, the bag also held the other technical bits you need to lug around. In this case, a Thinkpad X30 laptop, a Hyderdrive HD80 backup unit, and a Canon Pro1 Point and Shoot camera, Better Beamer unit for the 550ex flash, blower, lenspens, couple polarizing filters, chargers, and extra batteries for all the electronics. My gear bag weighed in at over 40 pounds at this point.

After packing my duffel bag with clothes and electronics that didn't fit in the camera bag, it was also around 40 pounds. This was a lot of weight to be carrying around, and the duffel bag had no wheels to make it easier. In hindsight I would not suggest a this type of solution. The weight savings of the simple duffel over the light weight wheeled luggage (3 pounds vs 8 pounds) was in the end, not worth it for the treks in airports. The proper solution is to bring less stuff. In this case, less clothes. Things to remember, is that a Tanzanian safari is done entirely from vehicles. Tripods are not going to work. You should be able to clamp on ball heads onto the top of the truck in many cases. Or you can lash down bean bags, which is what I ended up doing. For the 100-400, this wasn't really needed. But for the 6 pound 120-300, the bean bags helped quite a bit in stabilizing the camera. Speaking of working from a vehicle. Ensure that all your equipment that you plan on using is readily available, without requiring a huge amount of open space. The kata backpack was a bit problematic with 4 people in the back of the truck due to the way it opened with the hinge at the bottom. The reinforcement on the bag required me to unzip all the way, and open it up to get in. This was a bit of a pain. You can practice how things work at home, get into the backseat of your car with your gear and see how your bags, pouches, etc all work. I ended up carrying TC's in my vest pockets, along with an extra battery.

If I get a chance for another safari I would easily suggest two bodies for each photographer. In direct conflict to my above comments about weight. You'll end up with a 100-400 or similar on one body, but there were a number of times, where the 17-55 or similar medium length (I'm on a 1.6x crop factor body) would have been very useful. Having the lions walk right up to the truck for example.

Dust was not a problem except around Ngorongoro Crater area, which is filled with fine billowing dust everywhere. There is dust in the air elsewhere, but the environment overall was nothing that hostile for the camera gear. I had no failures of equipment on this trip.

Clothing seems to come up on safari web sites quite a bit. I spent a large amount of time trying to track down super light weight shirts and pants for the trip, before actually looking at the weather history. July in Tanzania is almost identical to Northern California, where I live. The temperatures where mid 70's to 80's in the day time, and it got cold enough to want a fleece jacket in the evening. The balloon ride was also chilly. Basic shirts and pants that are comfortable to sit around in a car all day are important. Shoes follow the same principle. You won't be hiking, so something like sandals may even be an option, but I would suggest something to cover your feet with for the temps in the evening.

The Tstete flies. They are out there, and they hurt like horse flies when you get bit (direct experience). The bug sprays on the clothes and applied during the day seemed to have a minor effect, just please leave all your bug spray with your guide when you leave, as it doesn't appear to be common for them to have any. Mashoka knew where the infested areas where, and we stayed away. For the most part they were around, and you will end up killing them, though you shouldn't get bitten often.

My workflow during the safari was quite easy with the HD80 unit, and my laptop. I ended up never running out of CF cards while out during the day time (we had about 10 gigs worth of cards). In the evening, I would copy the CF cards to the HD80, and the laptop. This gave me two copies in case of failure. I didn't bother doing editing, but I did bring the laptop to review shots taken during the day. We shot entirely in RAW mode on both cameras.

We shot around 3800 pictures on this trip, and these web pages give you approximately 350 of the better ones. My shooting habits didn't appear to change too much when shooting out on the safari. You'll shoot at about the same regularity as you do when you are out at home.

With hindsight now, there are a handful of minor things I would do differently. The most obvious, pack far less. You can have laundry done while you are staying at camps, and this reduces the total clothes you need to wear (if you are female, please note that many camps don't wash "female intimates", you'll be hand washing those).

The next thing I would change is to provide a schedule that allows for only 1/2 day game drives. It's not entirely apparent in the previous descriptions, but these are long days. Having some down time to rest a bit would have helped considerably.

Something that goes hand in hand with a little more down time. Talk to your guide and see if there are places you can just sit and watch and wait. We drove around quite a bit searching, except for the river crossing stop we made at one point. Sitting for an hour during the migration to watch the animals is quite interesting, and you get a chance to hear them.

Other than that, it's minor things. Third camera body with wide-medium lens on it so we could have grabbed that. Make sure you bring some small video camera with audio. We had one, and seeing movement and listening to things like the zebra's bark is worth it.

Overall this entire trip was something I would like to try again in the future. And suggest it to anyone who thinks about it, it's worth it to be able to see many of these animals, and the environment they live in.

-Matt