Africa Imagery – Photography in Africa

I received and interesting query the other day from someone wanting advice on what camera to upgrade  to. Here’s he question:

“I am currently thoroughly enjoying your book “In search of an African Wild Dog”, which got me contemplating my upcoming holiday in Mkuze & Hlulhuwe.  I am (at the moment, at least!) a Canon user with a 500mm f4 and 100-400 with a single 20d body.  I also have the 10-22, 24-105 and 70-200 lenses.  Given the issues with dust, lost opportunity, etc. in changing lenses, I am considering a second body.  Herein lies my dilemma, I am undecided between the 7D and 5D bodies, and every second day, methinks I should rather spend less on the body and buy a 50D,  before I switch minutes later to a MKIV (which in my more sober moments is simply too expensive for an occasional photographer).  Please help as my wife no longer is interested in my monologues on indecision.

Any help appreciated (even the number of a budget psychiatrist)…”

First off, while the 20D was a great body in it’s day, camera technology has advanced so much in recent years that upgrading to either a 7D or 5D MkII would make a huge difference to image quality. The interesting thing is, which body? Like so much in photography, it depends… It depends on what you shoot. If you do mainly wildlife then the one to go for would be the 7D and then enjoy the benefits of  the the 1.6 multiplication factor on the length of your lenses (More on this later). If the majority of your photography is fairly general – landscapes, people etc. then the 5D mkII would be the camera of choice. The Canon 7D uses a so called APS-C sized sensor which, at 22.2 x 14.8 MM, is smaller than the full frame (24 X 36mm) sensor used in the 5D and other full frame cameras. What this means is that it only utilises the central portion of the image projected by the lens and the effect is that the lens on the camera appears longer (by a factor of 1,6 with the 7D, 1,3 with the 1D and 1,5 with Nikon’s DX sensor cameras) than it is. The focal length of the lens remains the same of course. Let’s say you fitted a 300mm lens to a 7D. The effect would be like using a 480mm (300 X 1,6)  lens on the 5D. Have a look at this graphically:

Comparison between full frame and APS-C format

This is a wonderful advantage if you are shooting wildlife. Your 500mm f4 lens now effectively becomes a 800mm f4! Wow! Have you any idea what that would cost if you could buy such a lens? The 100 – 400 effectively becomes a 160 – 640mm zoom. The downside is that the same happens to your wide angle lenses and that, ultimately you will get the best image quality (from a noise point of view) from a full frame sensor. I’m in no way suggesting that the 7D images are noisy – it’s just that, for any given ISO value and all other things being equal, the images produced by a full frame sensor will have less noise than an APS-C sensor.

The downside of a  full frame sensor camera is that you cannot take advantage of the lower priced EF-S lenses – one has to go for the expensive but superb quality EF lenses.

You’ve got some superb lenses then and, if you can, go for either the 5D MkII or 7D rather than the 50D

Hope this helps. Need more info? Write to me.

This one caught us by surprise and no this is not about photography but rather something we experienced while doing photography. We needed some pix of the Drakensberg Boys’ Choir in the Champagne Valley for a book that we are photographing. We set up everything with the school and headed up there yesterday afternoon. Because we were doing pix we were allowed in during the “warm up” before the concert and were really impressed with the staff and boys and their preparations for the event. And then the visitors arrived – masses of them which we didn’t think was too bad for a Wednesday afternoon. We had intended to just do a few pix and then head home to try to meet deadlines etc. but we sat through the whole delightful performance. The music varied from classical to pop to African with much dancing and stomping of feet.

So, head up there and enjoy yourself. Lots of great restaurants, art galleries and music. And here’s the great bit of news: The Music in the Mountains festival starts on 23rd April (yes, that’s tomorrow) and goes on until the 26th. Well worth it methinks! More information here: http://www.dbchoir.info/

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Just a short one this week. We were down in Durban wrapping up the photography for a book on KwaZulu Natal and one of the things we had to get was some pix of Hindu Temple Dancers. But how? I thrashed around with some ideas and was getting nowhere very quickly when the thought occurred to me that I should be talking to my friend Raymond Pillay who heads up Assegai and Javelin – an amazing advertising agency in Durban. A quick call and a few minutes later all was set up. Local knowledge at it best!

Well almost. Local, local knowledge is even better. We started doing the shoot at the Palmview Temple, a typical, but rather plain Hindu Temple . Our young (experienced, it turns out) models were beautiful, dressed in their saris and jewellery we did a few pix and then of the mothers suggested that we move location to a temple near where she lived – aparently it was more attractive. We (6 of us) piled into Pat’s little Peugeot 206 (not really a “people carrier” of note) and wound our way through the back streets of Phoenix until we came to the most beautiful of temples and got some really great images of the temple as well as the temple dancers. Local knowledge really does work!

If you need images of temple dancers and other subjects have a look at our Image Bank.

Why not join us on our safari to Madikwe Game Reserve in May where we will be trying to get some great images of wild dogs. More info here: http://www.africaimagery.com/workshops_madikwe.php

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I’ve said it before, but it is worth repeating: If you don’t have a camera with you, you are not going to get many photographs!

I carry a little point and shoot camera around with me all the time and today it paid off. Pat and I were in the centre of Pietermaritzburg and we noticed a slight commotion opposite the city hall. We wandered over to have a look and who should get out of a car but Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Wow! It kind of made our day.

It seems that he is taking part in a documentary about some of the more interesting destinations in South Africa and he was in Pietermaritzburg to visit the Mahadma Gandhi statue close to the city hall. He was met by Mayor, Mike Tarr and Deputy Mayor Jabu Ngube. What a treat! And of course out came the camera and we got some very useful images. The quality of images from these little point and shoot cameras can be really awesome and it does pay to keep one with you.

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While we were in the Eastern Cape  recently we stopped off in Port Elizabeth to see if we could get some images of the Nelson Mandela Bay Soccer Stadium there. I had done some initial research using Google Earth and then quite a bit of pre-visualisation on the long drive down through the Free State and the Eastern Cape. As so often happens when you have done all the planning, is that the situation on the ground bears little resemblance to that you had in your head. Firstly, there was quite a bit of construction work happening, particularly with the road infrastructure around the stadium, and then the lovely view of the stadium across the lake was nothing like the image in my head!  We a bit of a recce but found nothing that came even close to the sort of thing that I had imagined. I did some images (the first couple in the gallery below) and as it was a little early in the day we headed off to find some lunch and see what was happening elsewhere. (Here’s a little tip on the side: When we are in a situation like this I log my position into my GPS (we’ve got a Garmin Nuvi 500) so that, after driving around a strange city, we can easily and quickly navigate our way back to the place we need to be).

We returned later when the light had improved and did a couple of more pix which also left me cold – the light was a little better but that was about it! Then I noticed in the distance, along the edge of the lake just below the stadium, some canoeists training. Wow! I grabbed some pix. But where were they coming from? Certainly not from anywhere near us.

We headed off in the car – they seemed to be from just to the south-west of the stadium in amongst some factories. The language in the car got steadily worse as we battled rush hour traffic and construction workers. Eventually we found the spot – the local canoe club – and spend an hour or so getting images more like the ones I had pre-visualised in the car. And the lesson/s: Well, pre-visualisation really does help in that I new that there was something more that I wanted. And of course the big thing is keep and open mind and don’t give up. Keep shooting until you really do have the pix you wanted.

Remember, if you wuld like to join us one one of our Photographic Safaris we have a number happening this year and our Image Library is growing by the day. We have been speaking to a number of photographers and we’ve got some very exciting portfolios comming on board soon. Whatch this space.

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I am a member of the Pix Magazine photography forum (have a look here: http://pixmag.ning.com) and from time to time members ask advice. Here’s a recent one and I’ve posted it here because I think that it could be useful to you. Here’s the question:  “Hi. I hope you are well. Roger can you please help me. I obviously must be doing something wrong on the aperture priority. I have noticed that when I try to blur the backgrounds of some of the photos it doesn’t always work. I adjust the aperture to minimum (3-5) the minimum that the camera allow”.

The depth of field is hugely influenced by your choice of lens (also by the aperture of course) and indirectly by your choice of camera. The reason I say by the camera is that if you are

This image was shot with Nikon's 200-400mm f4 lens at 400mm and at f4 resulting in a nice smooth background.

using a small sensor camera like the Nikon D300 or a Canon 7D then your “standard lens” (50mm on a full frame camera and somewhere around 35mm for the so called DX format cameras) is longer on my full frame D3x, for example, than on my wife’s D300. What this means is that in any given situation, you will be using a longer focal length lens with a full frame sensor than with a DX camera to achieve the same framing. And wide angle lenses, as we know, show more depth of field than telephoto lenses.

If you want out of focus backgrounds use the longest lens you can with the largest aperture you can and in your case it seems to f4.5. This aperture will limit things a little especially if the lens that you are using is fairly short. All those wonderful animal portraits with completely blown out backgrounds that you see are usually shot with lenses like the 300mm f2.8, 400mm f2.8 and the 600mm f4 – expensive glass to be sure.

There are 2 other things to consider:

The first is that the closer you are to your subject the shallower the depth of field – just try shooting macro. Number 2 is that the further the background is from your subject the more out of focus it will be. So the recipe for out of focus backgrounds is to use a long lens with a very large aperture (f2.8 or f4), get close to your subject (obviously within the limits of the lens that you are using) and make sure that the background is as far away as possible.

Hope this helps

What a bunch of fun that was. We mixed in a number of different shoots for our March 2010 KwaZulu Natal Photographic Workshop – scenery, birds of prey, portraiture, waterfalls and movement/action and got some great images in the process. It was a small group so we had time to really come to grips with some of the issues. One of the biggest was having the wrong settings on the camera when you go into a new shoot. This could be in the morning when your camera is still set up for that last light shoot  the previous evening and so you have ISO 400 set, self timer and mirror up set to on and 1 stop of exposure compensation dialed in. This is not good if you now have a bird of prey wizzing past and you are trying to shoot action!

This could make you a little miffed! And so we came up with MIFED (pronounced miffed). It stands for Mode, Iso, Focus, Exposure compensation and Drive. Something to check before each shoot…

Our next Midlands workshop is from 24 to 27 June 2010 (more information here: http://www.africaimagery.com/workshops_midlands.php) and we still have a couple of places left on our Safari to Jaci’s Lodges in Madikwe Game Reserve in May. (More information here: http://www.africaimagery.com/workshops_madikwe.php

Have a look at some of the images we captured on the KwaZulu Natal Midlands Photographic Workshop:

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I think it’s the most beautiful of the lot! The Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, South Africa dominates the city skyline making almost ever photograph shot before its completion last year, obsolete. The graceful steel centre arch, based on the South African flag, is 106m high and a cable car designed to take visitors up to the highest point where they can take in wonderful  views of the city operates daily. The arch is 350m long and weighs 2600 tons. During the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ it will seat 70 000 people reverting to 54 000 thereafter.

We stayed at a very convenient B&B in Durban North called Annies Place (http://www.anniesplace.co.za/) just a few kilometres from the stadium. We did quite a few panoramic shots of the Durban Country Club with the stadium in the background and stitched these together in Photoshop CS4 after doing the necessary tweaks in Lightroom. What an amazing combination. In many instances these days I don’t even worry about using a panoramic head. I simply lock the focus, exposure and white balance and go click, click, click, allowing about 25% overlap and voila. Have a look at some of the images we did over the few days we were in Durban before the cloudy weather moved in again.

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While we are chatting things photography, we’ve a few more spots available on our Photographic Safari to Madikwe Game Reserve in May 2010. Have a look here for more details. These are amazing fun! http://www.africaimagery.com/workshops_madikwe.php

It’s strange how things happen sometimes… We’ve been needing to update our aerial photography of Durban for some time now as the construction of the The Moses Mabhida Stadium for the 2010 Soccer World Cup has made many images of Durban obsolete. The weather in Durban and surrounds over the past months has been dreadful for photography and it’s only now that autumn is approaching are we able to consider any major shoots in the area.

ABSA and The Moses Mabhida Stadiums. Durban. KwaZulu Natal. South Africa

I happened to get a call from friend and fellow photographer John Lamberti (It was he that did those delicious biscuits that were available in the supermarkets at one time) and after chatting for a while he said that he was doing some aerial photography of Durban the next morning and would I like to split the costs. Would I just…? He had chartered a Robbinson 44 from Starlight Aviation at Virginia Airport (what amazing people to deal with) and after a very early morning (we had to drive down from Howick) we found ourselves flying slowly over Durban. The city was looking beautiful in the early morning light and we spent just under an hour dodging airliners in their final approach to Durban Airport and other helicopters doing pretty much what we were doing. Anyway, 660 shots later we landed back at Virginia. Have a look at some of the images we did here: http://www.africaimagery.com/albums/durban_aerial_photographs/index.html

Aerial photography can be quite tricky especially when working from a helicopter as, contrary to what one might expect, they can shake rattle and roll a little which does not really make for sharp images. Here then are a few photo tips for those taking to the sky with a camera.

1. Set the ISO setting to as much as you can without  creating too much noise. I used ISO400 on my Nikon D3x and it handled this like a bomb!

2. Set your camera to aperture priority and dial in the largest aperture you can. For me (I had Nikon’s 24 – 70mm lens on the camera) it was f2.8 but go as fast as you can. This sets up the camera to give you the highest shutter speed possible under current lighting conditions.

3. Set the drive to continuous (High).

4. Set the focus mode to continous (servo) and the focus point selection to automatic.

5. Keep the camera inside the aircraft when you are shooting  – you do not want to create any additional vibration by having the lens in the air flow.

6. Do not brace the camera on the aircraft anywhere as this allows vibration to be transferred from the plane top the camera.

7. And finally, a polarising filter can help cut through the haze but remember you do loose 2 stops of light when you screw it on.

Good luck and happy landings.Aerial Photography

Wow! What a Photo Graphic Safari that was! We had 5 people join us at Jaci’s Camp in Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa’s North West Province – Lousie Donald (Publisher of Pix Magazine), Tim and Yvonne Driman, Hilary Baak and Mike Rickard out from the UK. The idea was to try to photograph the African Wild Dogs that Madikwe Game Reserve is so well known for but, as so often happens with wildlife photography, the dogs were not quite as cooperative as they could have been. We did see them a couple of times though and we did get some pix. Everything else  seemed to be doing their best to be photographed – we had great times with elephants (and had a couple of charges to keep out attention going), lions and

Lilac Breasted Roller at Madikwe Game Reserve

general game and also managed to play with some scenic after sunset.

We followed the usual format of early morning and late afternoon shoots with image analysis and other photographic discussions in betewwn and the VERY attantative and helpful staff at the lodge forced deliscous food and drink down our throuts a regular intervals. While the standard of photography at the start of the workshop was pretty good, I must say that after 4 days of intensive work on images, techniques and Photoshop, some very fine images we starting to appear. Have a look at some of the images we shot here:

This workshop was so successful we’ve scheduled some more with 2 people having already booked onto the March one. Book you place now. Have a look here for more details. Louise Donald of Pix Magazine very kindly put this video together.