Tag: low light

What Lens to Take on Safari?

Posted on by James

The old adage of “The best camera to have is the one you have with you” will always stand true on safari, and the same can be said for lenses.
Most scenes and/or sightings can be reimagined to make your lens work for you, from an 8mm fish-eye to an 800mm zoom.

Ok that might be stretching it a little, as a proper wide-angle won’t get you that nice close up of a bird from forty metres away, nor will you be able to encompass a whole pride of lions next to your vehicle in one photo with a mega-zoom, but if you do happen to find yourself seemingly limited by your lens choice, simply zoom out (figuratively), and start to imagine what’s in front of you in a new way.

The solution of course is simply to have a selection of lenses with you, and move between them as the situation dictates, but multiple lenses can start getting expensive and heavy, not to mention dust-filled if you are constantly switching them out. Multiple camera bodies take care of this latter problem, but again you start encountering extra weight and expense.

What we want to do here is give a brief run through of some of the most commonly used lenses on safari, what they’re good for, and which parts of Africa you should be sure to pack them for.

WIDE ANGLE

These lenses are essentially wider than 35mm. They can be fixed or zoom lenses. The 16-35mm range is a popular one.
Wide-angle are severely underrated in the safari world. The tendency for most safari-goers is to want to zoom in close. This can be great if you’re after detail, or trying to isolate a single subject, but just because you can zoom, doesn’t mean you should. More often than not, by zooming in too much you are excluding critical elements of the photographic story. Wide angle lenses allow you to capture an entire scene, not just one single element of it.
Landscapes, big herds of elephants, room interiors… these are a few things you might want a wide-angle for. Astrophotography is pretty much impossible without a wide-angle, and they can be very effective in exaggerating the scale of something (see the elephant photo below).

Wider is often better, and since these lenses are quite compact more often than not, they won’t take up too much room in your camera bag.

Best Destinations for Wide-Angle: Namibia, Cape Town

MEDIUM ZOOM

Between 50mm and 300mm is generally your sweet spot if yu want a lens to tick as many boxes as possible. Wide enough to capture a landscape is an animal is far enough away from you, but with enough zoom to really be able to isolate a subject if its proximity allows for it. The 70-200mm f2.8 lens is the mainstay of wildlife photographers around the world, and Canon, Nikon and Sony all make one.

The f2.8 aperture is wide enough to be able to carry on shooting in low light conditions (eg. dawn and dusk), and in areas where the wildlife is habituated to vehicles and can therefore come quite close, any more zoom just feels excessive.

Best Destinations for Medium Zoom: Sabi Sands, Lower Zambezi, Gorilla Trekking

FIXED TELEPHOTO

Starting from 300mm, things start to get interesting. Your zoom is starting to pack a real punch, and fixed zoom lenses generally allow for wider apertures, which ultimately means better low-light performance, higher shutter speeds and fewer missed shots. The 400mm f2.8 in particular is an incredible lens.
The image quality tends to be superb, but since the focal length is fixed, you can sometimes feel a bit constrained. This is when a bit of creativity can be necessary.

With 500mm, 600mm and 800mm you are dealing with seriously bulky lenses, They can take amazing photos – portraits of a lions face from a good distance, crisp shots of tiny birds that make them look larger than life – but the lack of mobility can be a hindrance. Some sort of support in the form of a bean bag or Wimberley arm is needed when shooting from a vehicle, or a tripod if you are on foot.

Best Destinations for Fixed Telephoto: Serengeti, Maasai Mara, any bird-focused photography trip.

There is no right or wrong in your lens selection.
Certain lenses might be the only way to capture specific images, but sightings need not be restricted to those specific images; it’s ultimately up to your imagination how you choose to represent a sighting.

Be sure to get in touch with us through info@iconicafrica.com if you need any sort of photographic advice for your African safari.

Low Light Photography

Posted on by James

This is probably one of the trickiest areas of wildlife photography to get right.
Photography is all about light, and the less there is, the harder it is to take a sharp photograph. After sunset or before sunrise, cloudy days, or even shooting with a spotlight; all present their challenges, some of which can be overcome and others not so much. But with a couple of trips and tricks, you should be able to get some very memorable photos even when conditions are poor.

1. Know Your Equipment

A good workman never blames his tools, so they say, but the simple reality here is that some camera equipment is significantly better than others. Certain lenses let in more light, some bodies can cope with almost complete darkness, and having this more advanced (but unfortunately more expensive) equipment will go a long way towards getting better photos when the light is poor.
The two things to look for are lens that has a wide aperture (f2.8 or below) and a camera body with high ISO capability (ISO is a measure of the camera’s sensitivity to light). If you have those two you can probably keep snapping away for awhile when the sun has gone down.

If on the other hand you don’t have the advanced gear that the serious amateurs or professional photographers will make use of, it is important to recognise when you are barking up the wrong tree. You will probably hear a very slow shutter speed coming into play (your ranger will identify it for you), resulting in blurry photos.

Simply put your camera down, forget about taking photos, and enjoy watching whatever’s in front of you.

2. Try Something Different

Low light can be an excellent time to experiment.
If a leopard isn’t bathed in golden light but is instead moving slowly along  on a cold grey morning, it’s time to think outside the box.
Your camera will detect that there isn’t enough light around and use a slow shutter speed to compensate, but you can use this to your advantage.

By panning along with your subject, be it elephant, lion or leopard, and using a slow shutter speed, the background should blur out a bit whilst the animal (hopefully) stays sharp. This panning effect implies motion, and is a very effective way of conveying story, which is ultimately what wildlife photography is all about.

Understand Metering and Exposure

You are smarter than your camera. At least hopefully. Whilst you can clearly see that the world in front of you is veiled in darkness and the leopard illuminated in the spotlight is the only thing to concentrate on, and clearly the subject of your desired photo, your camera doesn’t know better. It will just see the darkness and try to compensate for it. It will open the shutter for longer to let more light in, thus massively overexposing the leopard and probably blurring it as well.

In a case like this, you need to tell the camera to keep things dark. You do this by adjusting the exposure. Have a read of a previous post of ours here to understand the concept a bit better.

Knowing how your camera reacts to different levels of light is crucial. The more advanced your photography becomes, the more control you will likely take away from it and put into your own hands (ie. you will be deciding all the settings for yourself).

 

Know What Your Subject Is

Is it the scene or is it the animal?

Do you want to accentuate the clouds or do you want detail in the wildlife?

A lot of the time in wildlife photography, you have to compromise. Make sacrifices. It’s like a relationship. Know what you have to give up on one side to gain something on the other.
Take a look at the photograph below, of wildebeest in the Maasai Mara.
Had the shot been exposed for the wildebeest, the dramatic colours in the evening sky would have been lost (the shutter would have necessarily been slower). Instead, the sky’s colours were prioritised and the wildebeest and lone tree were left as mere silhouettes. Which in turn tells its own story.
It would be very difficult (without the use of a flash or spotlight) to capture detail in both the sky and the wildebeest.

Ultimately, understanding exactly what shot you’re after, what settings you need to capture it, and what the limits of your equipment actually are, all combine to define how you can photograph in low light. But it’s certainly not a case of putting your camera away when the light fades.
Quite the contrary.

Feel free to drop any questions down below about all things wildlife photography related.