Just back from Steve and Rose's workshop in the Serengeti…and all I can say is wow. I've got 32K photos to sort through and I think Amanda on our trip is the winner at something north of 80K we calculated. Will post some once I get them processed…we had pretty decent weather and all had a great time.
Africa Trip
- Thread starter Anjin San
- Start date
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Looking forward to seeing some of your photos! I hope everyone had a great time.
Can't wait to see the pics. A thread giving a brief description of the trip would be great.
We had a ball…here's a quick synopsis of the trip. After landing in Arusha and spending the night we took a bush plane out to the Serengeti and spent 4 days in central and 4 days in southern part. Probably saw 50 lions total including some adorable cubs and got some really excellent dawn lion and lioness portraits one morning. Got pretty much everything on our list except a leopard (Rose got a 2 second video of the only one we saw but the rest of us got bupkus)…and we didn't get a chase and kill but we did get the aftermath of several kills by both cheetah and hyena. We did see a serval cat one morning at dawn which is pretty rare and got to spend about 25 minutes with 2 caracal cats which are pretty high on the rare list…our guide Ellison who's been driving there for 19 years has seen less than 10 and for a total of less than 2 minutes as usually one only gets a glimpse as they disappear into the brush…both Steve and Ellison described it as a once in a lifetime chance and better than 10 leopard sightings.
Weather was nice…rained some most days but mostly clear and not too hot. Bugs and dust were pretty much non existent. Camps and food were excellent…tents but very luxurious and didn't really meet any definition I had of a tent…and food was also excellent although it didn't really taste like what Americans thought it would based on the name but excellent nonetheless. I have 32K images to process and one person was over 80K but she had an extra day she spent one on one with a guide in Arusha National Park so the covered part of the extra. Cutest shot of the trip was a cheetah cub up on the spare tire on the vehicle with paws up on the steel rack in the back with a look on its face like "mom, look what I found". We had a lioness with 4 cubs so close to our vehicle that I could have reached out and petted her if I wanted to.
Roads…bumpy, lot of potholes, and we spent a lot of time in 4WD…but both Steve/Rose and our two drivers were truly outstanding. Great sunset and sunrise photos as well…and a lot of really great hints from Steve as to how to maximize an opportunity and try something different once we got the requisite record environmental and portrait shots. I'm definitely considering going again with them if they do Botswana next year for the different environment and river cruises as well.
I highly recommend springing for business class seats…yeah it costs more…and yeah it's still a bus with wings but the better food, more space, and lay flat so one gets some semblance of sleep on the flights is good although it's not good sleep, just better than in the back of the plane.
I've got my photos sorted out by days 1 through 8 and will get started culling/processing this week…will make sure I post shots here as I go. Overall…an expensive trip but well, well worth it for all involved. AFAIK we only had 2 instances of gear casualty on the trip…I have glass screen protectors on the back and top LCDs of my Z8 and Z9 and both top ones got cracked when one of the cameras landed on top of the other during a bounce…we generally took things easy on the drives but in the attempts to get close to a potential stalk/kill or get to where the other vehicle had found a good opportunity we occasionally had to enter Baja 1000 mode. The other casualty was the one person with Sony gear…she had an A1 with 600/f4 and 1.4 TC mounted all the time and the rear plate of the TC detached from the remainder of it dropping the body and still mounted lens mount plate to the ground…I don't think the lens crashed though and she was able to use it on the other body still. Steve cleaned the sand out as best as he could but on his recommendation she put that body away pending a full clean and inspect by Sony once she was home. We were all guessing that the TC had some sort of quality control issue as none of us had ever seen something like that happening before and Steve said that under his "tools not jewels" philosophy he had certainly treated his gear worse than she did.
Weather was nice…rained some most days but mostly clear and not too hot. Bugs and dust were pretty much non existent. Camps and food were excellent…tents but very luxurious and didn't really meet any definition I had of a tent…and food was also excellent although it didn't really taste like what Americans thought it would based on the name but excellent nonetheless. I have 32K images to process and one person was over 80K but she had an extra day she spent one on one with a guide in Arusha National Park so the covered part of the extra. Cutest shot of the trip was a cheetah cub up on the spare tire on the vehicle with paws up on the steel rack in the back with a look on its face like "mom, look what I found". We had a lioness with 4 cubs so close to our vehicle that I could have reached out and petted her if I wanted to.
Roads…bumpy, lot of potholes, and we spent a lot of time in 4WD…but both Steve/Rose and our two drivers were truly outstanding. Great sunset and sunrise photos as well…and a lot of really great hints from Steve as to how to maximize an opportunity and try something different once we got the requisite record environmental and portrait shots. I'm definitely considering going again with them if they do Botswana next year for the different environment and river cruises as well.
I highly recommend springing for business class seats…yeah it costs more…and yeah it's still a bus with wings but the better food, more space, and lay flat so one gets some semblance of sleep on the flights is good although it's not good sleep, just better than in the back of the plane.
I've got my photos sorted out by days 1 through 8 and will get started culling/processing this week…will make sure I post shots here as I go. Overall…an expensive trip but well, well worth it for all involved. AFAIK we only had 2 instances of gear casualty on the trip…I have glass screen protectors on the back and top LCDs of my Z8 and Z9 and both top ones got cracked when one of the cameras landed on top of the other during a bounce…we generally took things easy on the drives but in the attempts to get close to a potential stalk/kill or get to where the other vehicle had found a good opportunity we occasionally had to enter Baja 1000 mode. The other casualty was the one person with Sony gear…she had an A1 with 600/f4 and 1.4 TC mounted all the time and the rear plate of the TC detached from the remainder of it dropping the body and still mounted lens mount plate to the ground…I don't think the lens crashed though and she was able to use it on the other body still. Steve cleaned the sand out as best as he could but on his recommendation she put that body away pending a full clean and inspect by Sony once she was home. We were all guessing that the TC had some sort of quality control issue as none of us had ever seen something like that happening before and Steve said that under his "tools not jewels" philosophy he had certainly treated his gear worse than she did.
Nice work Anjin. To reinforce the special nature of your caracal sighting, I have around 100 days on safari, and in that time 33 different leopard sightings, 0 serval, and 1 Caracal.
Thanks for the great synopsis - just wondering what you brought for gear yourself?
Z8, Z9, 100-400, 600PF, 24-120 which got used once by me and once by Rose and the TCs, only used the 1.4 and only on the 600. We had 5 Nikon and 1 Sony shooters plus Steve and Rose on Nikon. Several 180-600s and nothing but Z8/9 for bodies. Steve had his 600TC and the Sony person had a 600/f4 and 200-600. My 180-600 came in while I was gone…and I’m not sure I would have taken it over the 100-400 for this trip since I used 100 a fair bit…going to CR with Steve’s trip in July and will take all 3 zooms…but then I will have my wife’s backpack for part of the gear since her gear is a Z50 2 lens kit. I am thinking of taking the 24-70/f4 instead of the 24-120 to CR for size and weight…or perhaps skipping entirely the short one and using iPhone 15 Pro Max for short stuff…it does 24MP RAW in 1x.
Thanks much - I really appreciate the details. I am planning a trip to South Africa next year and have a long time to figure out a kit. ;-)