Trip to Selous and Ruaha , Adansonia paranoia !

[africawild]

Congratulations on both excellent trip report and even better photos!

 

You have used some serious pro equipment; could you tell me what was your most used FL?

Thank you Xelas .

 

I took 4,637 pictures with 2 cameras and 3 lenses .

 

Focal length statistics at 35 mm equivalent :

 

9% 24-120 mm

2% 130-180 mm

15% 190-210 mm

19% 220-370 mm

40% 380-400 mm

15% 550 mm

 

Paco

[xelas]

Thank You Paco, very helpful. I am preparing for upcoming May travel to Namibia, it will be my first time in that part of the world.

 

So I am OK with D90 and D7100, 70-200f4. 300f4 and TC 1.4? I assume tripod will be useless, how is about taking a monopod?

 

Alex

[optig]

Dear Paco.

 

You made me look forward to my 10 day trip to Ruaha in August. I loved all your photos, especially the shot of the giraffe.

[africawild]

Thank You Paco, very helpful. I am preparing for upcoming May travel to Namibia, it will be my first time in that part of the world.

 

So I am OK with D90 and D7100, 70-200f4. 300f4 and TC 1.4? I assume tripod will be useless, how is about taking a monopod?

 

Alex

Alex , Namibia has amazing landscape and a wide angle should be great for many shots . Of course you will use your 70-200 for that too , but a 24-70 or even a extreme wide like a 12-24 will be great . Looking at the exif of my photos , I took most of my shots inside Dead Vlei with my 12-24 !!!

 

If you are very serious about landscape then Namibia is the African country to take a tripod , very good also for night photography . I did not take mine but probably i will if a go back one day .

 

 

Paco

Edited January 15, 2014 by africawild

[xelas]

Thanks, Paco, for your advices. I will have an 16-85 in my bag, and now, it seems that also a tripod will get its trip (it was not much used when I was in Costa Rica, yet there were mainly fast moving birds).

Could you post a link to your photos from Namibia? learning from actual photos is so much easier then reading photography books . Alex

[Atravelynn]

"We had a small incident at the airstrip . When the plane was at full speed the pilot had to abort the take off"

Do you know why?

 

Your day away from the prime action areas and the rewarding sable emphasize the importance of enough time to take advantage of all Ruaha has to offer.

[Sangeeta]

Brilliant stuff, Paco. It has been such a pleasure to read this and look at all your magnificent photos. Your combination of light and movement is very special. So many fantastic sightings but the Mohawk dikdiks take the prize for me as well Looking forward to your next one, wherever that may be.

[africawild]

Thanks, Paco, for your advices. I will have an 16-85 in my bag, and now, it seems that also a tripod will get its trip (it was not much used when I was in Costa Rica, yet there were mainly fast moving birds).

Could you post a link to your photos from Namibia? learning from actual photos is so much easier then reading photography books . Alex

Xelas , you will do great with the 16-85 and you probably would make good use of the tripod for landscape shots in low light .

 

Here is a link of my shots in Namibia from our trip 9 years ago . If you go to the Sossusvlei Gallery and look at the exif you will se that i took most pictures with my 12-24 !!

 

http://www.pbase.com/africawild/namibia05

 

Paco

[africawild]

"We had a small incident at the airstrip . When the plane was at full speed the pilot had to abort the take off"

Do you know why?

 

Your day away from the prime action areas and the rewarding sable emphasize the importance of enough time to take advantage of all Ruaha has to offer.

 

Yes Lynn , having 5 days for Ruaha was great and gave us the chance to go to less visited areas . But even more days would have been great because Ruaha is huge and has many beautiful and different areas to explore .

 

The incident ? well if you look carefully the photo under the sentence, you will see a giraffe in the middle of the airstrip just when we were about to take off . The pilot said that if it had been a small antelope he would have taken off but the giraffe was too much !!!!

 

 

Paco

[africawild]

Brilliant stuff, Paco. It has been such a pleasure to read this and look at all your magnificent photos. Your combination of light and movement is very special. So many fantastic sightings but the Mohawk dikdiks take the prize for me as well Looking forward to your next one, wherever that may be.

 

Thank you Sangeeta ,

 

You are right , the Dik Dik fight was definitely one of the highlights of this trip but i will say also from all our African trips !!!!

 

 

Paco

[xelas]

Paco, you are truly Maestro de la Luz!! And composition!

[Atravelynn]

Oh yes, there is the giraffe. I was focused on the instrument panel. Though this is a report about Ruaha, I like your Namibia advice. I'll click like on it.

 

5 days is better than 3. A week would be better than 5. Two weeks better than one. A month better than a fortnight. An entire season better than a month. A year, better than a single season.

[FlyTraveler]

Fabulous photography @@africawild!!! I am enjoying very much your images and writing and feel sorry for ourselves - we dropped a planned Selous and Ruaha trip for February in favor of a South American city trip plus Iguazu Falls (which we did in November-December). May God forgive us, we'll be back on the right track (safari) for the next trip to South Africa and Botswana and hopefully we will materialize our Selous and Ruaha dream some day.

[Bush dog]

Paco,

 

I joined the community to-day, though,those last 20 years, I have been a regular visitor to Africa and Pantanal.

Having been there already, I mainly look at the pictures. The overall quality is very good. Your aerial shots are excellent.

What soft do you use to process your pictures?

I am also very happy to see that you also include some B&W photographies. As a new member, I will not make any detailed reports of all my previous trips, it would be too long.

I think I will put a selection of B&W pictures only.

[Atravelynn]

See? Your report is a recruitment tool for safaritalk. I think you've recruited me to Ruaha. Marvelous photos!

[Marks]

@@africawild I apologize for "liking" so many posts several months late, but I couldn't help myself! My own favorites include the ground hornbill in flight, the baobab sunset, and the baboon with kill. I'm also becoming increasingly enamored of aerial shots thanks to Safaritalk, and your examples are only reinforcing this new interest.

 

Thanks for taking the time to share!

[africawild]

Thanks Bush dog .

 

All my photo editing is done in Lightroom , very simple , fast and sufficient for my needs .

 

¡¡ 20 years of safaris in pictures !! That would be great to watch , look forward to see some of them .

 

Paco

[Bush dog]

Thank you Paco,

 

I also have Lightroom, but only since a couple of months. How do you make the frames?

By the way, I love the monkey and the chair, the skimmers, the girafe and the flying oxpecker, the dik dik's fight, the moon and some of your landscapes.

Yes 20 years of safaris is a lot. So I think, I will only focus on the last 10 digital years and make reports giving general impressions and details on highlights and exceptional sightings.

I will soon make a first report on a trip I made in the Mara in 2012.

 

Mike

[africawild]

Bush dog , for the frames i use a plugin for Lightroom call ; LR\Mogrify .

 

Paco

[Tom Kellie]

~ @@africawild

 

What an image!

I really like the energy it shows!

Tom K.