craneman wrote:
In 3 weeks my wife and I are going on a photo safari to South Africa. I am taking a Nikon D7500 with a 70-300 zoom lens and a Nikon P1000 for close and very far shots. My question is, how do I sweet talk my wife into packing one of the cameras?
One option would be to bring your girlfriend and your wife so they can carry more equipment. Or take me and I will carry what ever you need. Barring that, I suggest a few things:
I (and a lot of other hogs) have written extensively on this forum re Africa trips. I will try to summarize here.
I recommend that you search this site for prior Africa trip recommendations. Second, here is a repost of something I wrote a while back on Africa. I altered it slightly to hopefully help you.
First of all, I am envious of your trip. I've been to Africa and cannot wait to go back. Remember, you go for the animals and come back for the people. Seriously.
When I was there I found it absolutely necessary to have two cameras set up for the scenarios I was going to run into in the bush. I carry M4/3 equipment (which is much lighter btw and was perfect for my trip). I had one body with a 12-100 (24-200 FF equivalent) and one body with a 100-400 (200-800 FF eq). I was THE perfect set up. The roads can be quite dusty so changing lenses in the bush is not an option. In fact, I had a backpack on the seat between my wife and I and eventually kept my cameras in some light weight sacks on my lap to keep the dirt off (it was way beyond dust..it was dirt.) I think next time I would use a pillow case or similar. Keep a blower with you at all times. Clean all gear at the end of the day.
You will be surprised at how close you will be getting to animals. Double check the parks you are going to...in some parks, guides drive off road and get very close to animals and in some they are limited to the roads...if your guide goes off road and you have some 500 mm lens on your camera, it just wont work. You will wish you had wider angle lens. The opposite is true for the longer range shots..so you need to be prepared for wide and tele shots.
I think if I had regular sized equipment (photographically speaking) I would consider a bridge camera and a smaller point and shoot. The Nikon P1000 and maybe another smaller camera might be all I'd take. I saw people with massive white lenses in safari vehicles and they looked awkward and unwieldy. One guy was armed for loooong range shots only to find that the animals were practically riding with us in the car. I am sure he got a nice photo of an elephant's eye...but that was about it. One had to be prepared for the right shooting circumstances. An iPhone would have worked better. You may get a Nat Geo pic but most will be memories for you and your wife (and girlfriend if she goes).
I'd skip the tripod. I would have never used it. Cant use it in the bush because you cannot get on the ground usually, lest a critter might want to eat you. And if you do (we did...had an interesting encounter with a rhino whilst on foot), you have to be mobile. There may be a way to do some nighttime astro stuff, but keep in mind, animals are active at night.....eating. You cannot just go out and start shooting away. You say you will use it around the lodge...maybe...but during the day you probably wont need it and at night, you may be limited to staying indoors or have an escort because critters can invade the camp or the camp has no fences. You are not in Kansas anymore and there are real animals that will feast on you...or at least bite you resulting in your demise.
Most of the animal photography i did was far more close than I would have expected. Like maybe 20-50 feet. I could have left my long telephoto home and only missed a few shots. Again, depending on where you are viewing animals and off road capabilities will determine your lens length. In spots such as Kruger, you will need a longer lens...in private reserves, probably not.
Be armed at all times! Meaning take a camera everywhere you go. We were walking to dinner in Namibia (kind of freaky in that we were in a camp with no fencing and no escort to dinner and a watering hole nearby...no elephants in the camp but there were lions) and some bush babies were poking their heads out of trees. I slapped the camera into Auto with a high iso and got some decent shots. Speaking of auto iso, you should consider getting familiar (or you may be familiar) with the concept...it works pretty well.
I found no need for a computer. I just put my little SD cards in a holder and hoped for the best. Having a drive back up makes sense. You need a lot of dust and dirt mitigation stuff...blowers, leaf blowers, what ever.
I set up a pre-set on both cameras to capture very fast movements of animals in case we were lucky enough to see a chase. Never happened except at a cheetah preserve in Namibia. But I suggest you do it. When and if that happens, you will not be able to respond fast enough to capture the chase without a preset. I usually shot in Aperture mode. Animals were not really active.
I took a flash and never used it. Some folks bring one with a snoot. Most game reserves do not allow it for obvious reasons.
Remember, you are a rich American (assuming here). Tip generously. You will find that the Africans will try to make your trip as pleasant as possible. In Namibia, I tipped $100 for a two night stay and the receptionist got teary-eyed. You visit a village, try to buy things and leave some money there. You will see some people in very dire circumstances. Covid has drastically impacted the Africans. Be prepared and be generous.
One way to keep weight down is to figure out which lodging place has laundry facilities or laundry services...we were at a few spots where they did it for free, other places they did it for a very low cost. I did a little timeline of when we were doing laundry and found that we really did not need a lot of clothes. I found it much easier to pack for Africa than say a trip to the East Coast of the US.
I know that is more than what you asked for. But I want you to have the best trip possible. Two last pieces of advice. 1- Sometimes, put the camera down and just BE THERE. I did it a few times and it was memorable. Thinking I was in the middle of the bush, watching a lion eat some critter, I was with family, and darned lucky to be able to do it. 2- Talk to people. We were at Robben Island where Mandala was imprisoned for 25 or so years. The crowds went off and I was left with the Robben Island tour guide...who was a prisoner there for about 15 years. Very long story short. He was an anti-apartheid fighter. He was a convicted terrorist (from the ruling White perspective). Was trained in Angola by the Cubans to fight the white ruling party (Afrikaans) in South Africa. He and his fellow resistance blew up bridges, power stations, etc. They were careful to not harm people (so he said) because they knew they would eventually win and have to live with the whites. We talked about weaponry, philosophy of their strategies, family, struggles, etc. It was a memorable day.