Safari / gorilla trekking camera(s)

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Graeme baillie

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Graeme
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I am hoping someone can give me some advice. I am a bit of a newbie when it comes to cameras, I have played about with slrs before and primarily use a fujiflim hs10 bridge camera as my holiday and day to day camera.

My wife and I Have a trip planed for next July to go to uganda for a couple of weeks to do gorilla and chimp trekking as well as doing general safari experiences (lions, elephants, buffalo, birds etc).

We are unsure of what the best cameras are to buy as I believe the gorillas will be very close, around 5 meters away but there will be very low light as they are in the middle of the jungle which will have a canopy. The humidity and chance of rain will also be very high so I am not sure if we will need rain covers etc.

For doing the chimp trekking we are likely to be a little further away, probably a max closeness of 10 meters and it is likely the area they are In the lighting may be slightly better.

For general safari the lighting will be bright as it will be open savanna mostly however they could be very far away at times.

My initial thoughts was that we may buy 2 cameras something that is good in low light with a high ISO (a dslr) and then something that has a big zoom (like the panasonic fz72 bridge camera). I was hoping that my wife and myself will get some good snaps with both cameras at all locations but we know that 1 camera may better suited to the shooting conditions in each location.

Because we are on a bit of a budget I was also thinking of looking at second hand camera. Any thoughts on this?

Any advice/ thoughts.
 
What's your budget as this will determine what we would recommend.
 
I have to echo what Pete says, depends on what you wish to spend. I can only talk about Nikon cameras as I have no experience of Canon DSLR's. Nikon D300's which are pro body spec really are going for as little as £350 second hand. Affordable decent glass? it would need to be fast because of the poor light, I'd consider a Sigma 70-200 F2.8, maybe the non optically stabilised one, again £300 ish 2nd hand. This set up would be more than up to your gorilla and chimp photography. Regarding bridge cameras, I've never had one to be honest. I was in Gambia in April, when a friend enthused about the benefits of his massive digital zoom on his new fuji, without being unkind the images were bloody awful, there isn't a cheap way to get good performance at long focal lengths. You could pick up a 2 x sigma teleconverter for a lens such as I suggest, that would be around £100 second hand and give you more scope for your savannah shots and far better image quality than a bridge camera. hope this helps.
 
Pentax cameras are light and weather sealed, good in low light too, have seen the K5II going for a goodly price since the launch of the K3
 
You're going to want long for wildlife on the savannah... even 400mm is unlikely to cut it if you want any closeup shots. I chose the Sigma 120-300 OS for my safari needs (and a 1.4 and 2xTC) but I am assuming your budget wouldn't stretch to that so maybe a used Sigma 50-500? You would need a fast zoom for the Gorillas though, which again would probably be the 70-200.

I am thinking of doing the Gorillas next year and will be taking the 120-300 but I'm not entiely sure it is wide enough.

So depending on budget something like a used D7000 (weather sealed and better IQ than the D300), a used 50-500 and/or a used 70-200 f/2.8.
 
I haven't 'done' gorillas, so can't offer advice on that side of your question, but I have spent time on Masai Mara and a Sigma 50-500 would be more than useful. I has the length to get in close for distant sightings but is also wide enough for the inevitable close encounter. Don't forget to put the camera down from time-to-time and watch the animals without any glass between you and them.
 
The gorillas should be allowed to get no closer than 7m (to try and prevent them catching any of your germs). But the gorillas don't seem to have been told this.

I visited them in Rwanda after having spent a week on the Mara. I took my 100-400, which was a bit too long and a bit too slow. In hindsight a 70-200 f2.8 (or even an f4) would be preferable. We were lucky in that the gorillas chose an open spot to have brunch and that the weather brightened a little. Some of my pics are here - LINK
 
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