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.

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 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

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.

It’s interesting how similar issues raised themselves in batches from time to time.  Recently I have had quite a few enquiries from people wanting to know which version of Photoshop to use.  What I am finding with my own work is that most of my image processing is being done in Adobe Lightroom with only some of the more advanced edits having to be done in Photoshop.

When Adobe launched Lightroom 2 (and it’s now up to version 2.6) the addition of adjustment brushes increased the processing power of Lightroom to the extent that Photoshop has

A raw image as its was shot before processing in Adobe Lightroom

almost but not quite become redundant to processing images.  I would guess that something around 90% of my raw images don’t need much editing at all other than levels correction, a bit of dust removal, perhaps a little local adjustment (which is where the brushes come in) and may be correcting a skew horizon or two.  I find that I’m only using Photoshop to stitch together panoramic images or work with layers when I need to.  And even here I do most of the edits in Lightroom, right click the image, then select edit in Photoshop.  Lightroom converts the image to a 16 bit TIFF file, opens it in Photoshop, where it or you do the necessary reprocessing and at the end of it, it opens the image in Lightroom again as a 16 bit TIFF.  It stacks this new file with the original so that you can easily find them.

What I am suggesting to people now in is that instead of buying one of the top Photoshop versions, they rather get Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop Elements which has the added advantage of being a little more affordable.  And yes I know that

Here the images has been processed in Lightroom only.

Photoshop does have a raw converter that is a perfectly competent editing program and actually is the same raw converter engine that is found in Lightroom but in my opinion, working with in Lightroom is very much more user-friendly and logical.

So just a short one this week and if you have any specific queries in this regard is feel free to contact us.

When I mentioned to a friend recently that we were heading out to 88m high Karkloof Falls in the Kwazulu Natal Midlands to do some pix of the falls, all he said was, “what? In this @%*$ weather – it’s overcast and raining!” Well, in many instances, this is the best time to be shooting waterfalls and water. If you photograph a waterfall in sunlight, very often the whites of the falling water blow out completely and if you try to hold exposure on them then the rest of the images is really very underexposed. Best of all though, in the low light of the overcast conditions you can shoot at very long shutter speeds resulting in those soft, fluffy waterfalls.

Here’s the first Image – shot from the viewpoint as you arrive. As you can see from the exposure data the long 2 second exposure has allowed

Karkloof Falls. Exposure Data: 2 Sec at f16. Iso 100 + Polarising Filter

the falling water to blur completely and a polarising filter  cuts the reflections on the rocks, foliage and water resulting in more saturated colours.

We then moved to the area above the falls to the much smaller waterfall called Woodhouse Falls (you see them above the main falls). Here I experimented with different shutter speeds to change the effect of the blurring. The choice of shutter speed depends on your personal preferences and on what you are trying to portray but have a look at the exposure data below each image and use what you think is best.

WoodHouse Falls. Exposure Data: 1/4 Sec at f16. ISO 100 +Polarising Filter

WoodHouse Falls. Exposure Data: 1/30 Sec at f5.6. ISO 100 +Polarising Filter

WoodHouse Falls. Exposure Data: 1/60 Sec at f4. ISO 100 +Polarising Filter

WoodHouse Falls. Exposure Data: 1/250 Sec at f2.8. ISO 400 +Polarising Filt

I wasn’t quite happy with my pic of the main falls and we scouted around for another view point. Eventually we discovered and tiny, indistinct little path through the thick bush that led to a rock overhang with a stunning view of the falls. The problem was the sky. The contrast between the rather dark gorge and trees and the sky was just too much for the camera to handle. I decided to use a fairly new (well it’s actually been out for a few years now) technique called High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging. What you do is shoot a number of different images at different exposures. I used what the camera metered and then +1, -1. -2 and -3 stops. I then run these images through some software called Photomatix which, to cut a very long story short and to oversimplify it, blends all the images together and compresses that range of tones. The last image is what you get.

We are running a Photo Workshop in Howick in early January and then again in March and will be working these falls as part of the experience. Have a look here for more details: http://www.africaimagery.com/workshops_midlands.php.

Karkloof Falls. HDR image from 0, +1, -1, -2, -3 exposures.