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.

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.

[View with PicLens]

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

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.

A famous photographer (and I cannot for the life of me remember his name at the moment :-S) once said after being asked how he got such great pix answered, “f8 and be there”. I’ve been thinking about that recently… There are 2 absolute essentials to photography: The first is that you need a camera and the other is that you actually need to be on location. I remember a boss of mine saying once (and remember I was employed as a wildlife photographer at one stage), “Roger, you need to spend some time in the office — we never see you around the place!?”. Now, you’re not going to do much wildlife photography in the office and all I was trying to do was my job.

Lately I’ve taken to carrying a small compact camera around with me. Depending what I’m doing, it’s either the Nikon P6000 or the Olympus E-P1.

The Sun Coast Casino. Durban. KwaZulu Natal. South Africa.

Both are capable of producing the MOST spectacular results and both are capable of shooting raw images, and essential part or creating beautiful images.

Pat shot this first Image on the right using the Nikon P6000 while be were working on a small book on Durban and Surrounds. It was made in the early evening and hand held (Vibration Reduction is an awesome invention). Pat has very steady hands (I HAVE to use a tripod) but even so hand holding a camera at 1/11 sec at f3.7 at ISO 200 is no mean feat! One doesn’t want to upload huge files but if you were to have a look at the image at 100% on the screen, the detail and low noise levels are way beyond anything one could realistically expect from such a tiny camera.

Then there is the Olympus E-P1. I’ve taken to carrying this around with me on our motorbike rides (we have a BMW 1150 GSA Anventure Bike) in a tiny camera bag over my sholder. The great thing is that you do all your viewing on the LCD screen on the back  – no need to hold it up to you eye so you can shoot with your helmet on. It is a DSLR but looks like one

Michaelhouse. KwaZulu Natal. South Africa

of the old rangefinder cameras of yesteryear and takes interchangeable lenses. I use it with the standard 14 to 24 mm. I got this image of Michaelhouse one Sunday afternoon on one of our rides around the KwaZulu Natal Midlands. Hand held, I took 2 adjoining exposures and after adjusting settings in Adobe Lightroom I stitched it together in Photoshop CS4. What could be simpler?! And the image quality is astounding!

We’ve had the most appauling weather here in Howick over the past weeks. Rain, mist and temperatures in the low teens, and this in the middle of summer. We did get a small patch on Sunday when it looked as though we may escape the rain (we were mistaken by the way)

Karkloof Falls, My 1150 GSA and Tony Keytel's 1200 GSA. KwaZulu Natal. South Africa

and headed off to the Karkloof Falls. These are pumping at the moment and grabbed this image of the falls, the bikes and friend Tony Keytel.  I used a longish focal length to bring the falls closer to the “action”.

The wonderful thing though is that in all these cases, I had a camera with me and so was able to get some very useful (and saleable) images. To lug a full size DSLR around in these situations is not practical and in reality I probably wouldn’t!

And then there is one last thing about these tiny cameras: There are times when the last thing that you want is to look like a pro photographer and when you haul out a Nikon D3x that’s exactly what you look like! The answer is one of these little “pro” compacts.

Remember: f8 and be there!