What equipment do I need for a successful photographic safari?

What type of camera should I take? What lens do I need? Do I need more than one? What accessories will I need?

So here is a short article on the recommended equipment you may need for your photo safari in Africa.

Cameras

• A good DSLR camera or the latest hi-end Mirrorless cameras is the choice of professional photographers.
• A back-up camera is useful incase something goes wrong with your main camera
• If you don’t have any of the above a good bridge camera with a equivalent zoom range between 24mm and 600mm.

Lenses

Due to space and weight limitations the following lenses are highly recommended for your wildlife photography;
The Tamron 150-600mm G2 lens and the Sigma 150-600mm Sports lens are excellent and will not break the budget. They are available in the following mounts – Canon, Nikon and Sony.
If you want te equivalent brand names then we suggest the following;

• Canon 100-400mm Zoom can be used with a 1,4x converter
• Nikon 200-500mm Zoom lens cannot be used with a converter
• Sony 200-600mm Zoom lens can be used with a 1,4x converter

Then for shorter lenses, we suggest the following;

• 70-200mm lens ( Canon, Nikon, Sony, Sigma and Tamron)
• 24-70mm lens ( Canon, Nikon, Sony, Sigma and Tamron)
• Prime Lenses ( all brands) 400mm F2,8, 500mm F4, 600mm F4

These lenses can be combined with 1,4x, 1,7x and 2x converters but you must remember that you now need either a beanbag or Whimberley mount to shoot from. These need to be brought with you.

Memory Cards

• Always use the fastest and best memory cards available for your camera
• Have at least two spare memory cards for safety
• We suggest no less than a 64gig memory card
• After every session download your images and backup your images on a second drive. Make sure your images were downloaded and backed up before formatting your memory cards.
• If you do not download your images whilst on safari ( not recommended) you should have a minimum of at least 10 memory cards with you.

So those are my recommendations. Please let me know if you have any questions about that to bring to your next photographic safari.