Africa 2007 - Camera Notes

camera notes

Photography on our trips to Africa has evolved for Bianca and me, from recording our travel experiences to an important element in our planning and enjoyment of the trip. And our equipment has increased in quality (and weight!) along the way ...

Our 2007 kit ... a Canon 30D camera with Grip and a Sigma 18-200mm, a Canon XTi with a Canon 28-135 IS (image stabilized), a Canon 100-400L IS, a Canon 10-22mm, two 2GB CFs and five batteries for each camera, a Wolverine portable hard drive which holds 160GB, a mess of cables, caps, tissues, Rocket air puffer, cleaners, sensor cleaning kit, rechargers, and good old 'stuff' -- all in a Tamrac Expedition 5 backpack, which fully loaded weighed in at 19.6 pounds ... our carbon fibre tripod and ballhead went in a suitcase. All four lenses fit both cameras.

Through the dozens of airport security checkins (including Heathrow twice) I was asked to open the Tamrac only once, and that was probably a random check - the contents were recognized (and deemed safe) everywhere else.

The headline is that "we had it covered" - one or more cameras with one or more lenses for every situation in which we found ourselves. We have learned on previous trips to stay ahead of the memory and power cuves, and the Wolverine performed flawlessly. We came home with 82GB of our own photos and 10GB of "favor" backups for people we met along the way.

Bianca shot with her XTi on 'Auto' most of the time, switching to 'Sports' on occasion - and she's very pleased with what she got. I was on 'Aperture Priority' most of the time - I used an old F2 trick I learned years ago, start at double the minimum aperture for the lens I was using (e.g. 9.0 for the 100-400 4.5-5.6). I used ISO 200 or 400 during the day and 1600 at night, but these are generalizations - I tweaked for the situation.

After the first 2 or 3 days, Bianca was grabbing the 18-200mm lens every time I took it off my camera - she MUCH preferred it to the 28-135mm, which is just a bit too tight at 28mm and quite a bit too wide at 135mm for her eye. As soon as we got home we ordered a Sigma 18-200mm OS (their version of image stabilization) for her walkaround.

The Sigma 18-200mm is, for us, a perfect basic walkaround lens ... it's not the greatest under low light conditions, granted, but it's a terrific all-round lens for oportunistic shooting.

The Canon 100-400mm is an incredible lens - period. We very quickly fell into a pattern on Game Drives -- I shot with 'Dick', Bianca shot with the Sigma, and the resulting coverage was phenominal - we were pleasantly surprised when we got home and started sifting through our photos.

The 100-400mm on a 30D with grip is heavy, over 5 pounds ... but I found it to be very stable, and the push-pull zoom was intuitive.

The 10-22mm was unique and quirky - it was probably worth it for the dozen sunsets and panoramas that turned out well ... but several times I found myself reaching for another lens (ANY other lens) when I spotted something new. We had a circular polarizing filter on the 10-22mm, and the wide angle landscapes are indeed breathtaking.

The tripod would have to be termed a 'luxury' on a trip like this ... we didn't even think about using it during the first two and a half weeks, so we left it behind for the next 10 days - during which we said exactly once, "Wish we had the tripod"! We used car hoods and fences and sweaters and rocks to prop up a camera for the obligatory 'timer' group shots ... and night shots - you have to have light to take nightimes, and in the middle of the Masai Mara there sure ain't much light after dark!

We decided not to take a flash with us, and I don't think we missed it - the on-camera flashes worked fine. I suppose there's a solution somewhere to the issue that a Canon 430 flash only takes rechargeable batteries, and nothing else in our kit does - but we didn't miss the external flash at all.

The Tamrac bag fit like a glove ... we didn't want to leave any equipment in our tents or hotel rooms, so I decided to bite the bullet and take it everywhere. No problems, and no regrets -- it's the most comfortable backpack I've ever carried, everything is accessible, and we never once said, 'Damn, wish we had brought the [blank] lens ...'

On the subject of "accessible" - I did add two 1" white velcro straps to the Tamrac (holding in the cameras) which was a big help - black straps over black camera bodies inside a black interior is tough, at least on my old eyes ... we strapped EVERYTHING down, EVERY time - so Bianca could unzip the bag and get out a camera while the bag was on my back.

We've read lukewarm reviews of the Wolverine ESP, but for us it's in the 'works great' category. Our five-year-old Mindstore portable drive finally bit the dust, so we bought the 80GB Wolverine, and upgraded it to 160GB ourselves. Dumping CF cards into the Wolverine is not a speedy process (3 or 4 minutes for a full 2GB CF card) but it is battery powered - more than once I dumped full cards while in a Land Rover bumping across the dirt roads of Central Africa. And being able to share previously dumped photos with new friends was a big advantage - the screen is very big and very bright. The ability to dump various card types is a big plus, too - it handles CFs, SDs, etc.

The "power" situation was routine ... on past trips, we carried a universal charger with several adapter cables for camera AA and other rechargeable batteries; that worked, but it was a "fussy" process. This trip, we took a main and backup plug-in recharger (110/240v) for each camera's proprietary batteries, with a 12v cigarette lighter adapter for each of the backups. With five batteries for each camera, we were never in trouble, even when local solar power couldn't recharge a battery above 50% or so ... too bad the XTi and the 30D don't use the same size battery! One backup recharger failed three weeks into the trip, but that caused no problems - we were still fine with a single recharger for that camera.

We did take one 'toy' which will now be standard for us -- a Canon Selphi printer. The reactions from family and friends to receiving postcards which were photos of Bianca and me, or of something we had actually photographed ourselves - they were great! The real heart-tugger, though, was handing a print to a Rwandan boy - a photo of him blowing out birthday cake candles the night before ... THAT'S priceless ...!

So what would we do differently ...? In general - nothing ... the walk-around lens situation is now settled (we both have Sigma 18-200mm lenses) ... power was not an issue ... and the Wolverine worked flawlassly. That may be our one achilles heel - if the Wolverine fails, we could probably recover everything on its hard drive when we got home, but we'd face serious memory problems, at least until we got to a city where additional CF cards could be purchased. Otherwise - we're very happy with everything ...