“Do you have this in pink…?”
Manfrotto MT190CXPRO4 Carbon Fibre Tripod with Horizontal Column
If you want to buy a camera or lens for wildlife photography, there are probably millions of online articles to give you all the advice you need, but what about accessories? Tripods, filters and cleaning kits might not be as sexy, but when you need them, you really need them!
Here’s a quick guide to the accessories I have and when I tend to use them….
Tripod
Gitzo gimbal head
I don’t need a tripod very often in Africa, but I do have a Manfrotto MT190CXPRO4 Carbon Fibre Tripod with Horizontal Column with a Gitzo GHFG1 Gimbal Head. The carbon fibre makes it pretty light, and it comes in useful if I need to take pictures of the northern lights or slow pan shots.
Using a tripod on a game drive is almost impossible due to the limited space and the fact that you normally have to stay in the vehicle. However, I did use mine on my recent trip to the Serengeti to see the Mara river crossing.
The difference was that we were parked on the riverbank most of the time, so it was easy enough to set up my tripod in advance and just wait for the wildebeest to start crossing the river.
The reason I wanted my tripod was to take slow pans of the animals galloping across the Mara. A gimbal is a great way to support a long lens, and mine has a fluid cartridge that damps down any unwanted jerkiness or vibration.
It worked pretty well—when I remembered to use it! However, one of the locks stopped working for some reason, so I couldn’t use the larger, more stable section on one of the legs.
Monopod
If I can’t use a tripod for whatever reason, I also have a monopod. My Manfrotto XPRO 4-Section Photo Monopod, Aluminium with Quick Power Lock weighs less than a kilogram, and it collapses down to 56 cm. That means I can carry both my tripod and my monopod in the sleeve on the side of my camera bag.
A monopod doesn’t give you the stability you need for photography at night or proper slow pans, but it’s handy if you’re standing and waiting for a long time. It also gives you crucial extra reach if your vehicle doesn’t have a roof! The Gypsy 4x4s in India are like that, so I really needed my monopod in Bandhavgarh…
Filters
Sony VF-DCPL1 drop-in polariser
I traded in almost all of my old filters when I moved from DSLRs to mirrorless, but I still have a couple of polarisers and ND filters. These can cost hundreds of pounds, so it was annoying that I had to get different ones to suit the different filter widths on each of my lenses.
However, they do come in useful in certain situations. Polarisers reduce reflections and darken the sky—especially at right angles to the sun. They also ‘cost’ you a stop of light, but that’s a good thing if you’re doing slow pans in Africa! The light is usually so bright that you need a polariser or an ND filter to allow you to use slow enough shutter speeds.
My telephoto lenses are so big that they need drop-in filters, so I have the Sony VF-DCPL1 drop-in polariser. All my other filters are made by Hoya. I have a couple of polarising filters with 77mm and 82mm filter widths.
Hoya 82mm CIR-PL HD3 Filter
I also have a Hoya YYN3077 Variable Density II Filter ø77mm. It’s an adjustable ND filter that screws on to the front of the lens and has a range of 1.5 to 9 stops. It even has a little, silver knob that you can attach to make it easier to turn.
Cleaning Kit
Most photographers probably have a lens cloth or a blower, but how often do they actually get used? It’s very easy to get caught up in the moment, taking lots of pictures without checking what the local conditions are doing to your lenses. And even if you do check, it’s sometimes hard to see if you’re using a lens hood or the sun is casting deep shadows.
When I’m on a game drive, I tend to assume that my lenses are clean, but when I take a proper look, they’re usually covered with a thin coating of dust! I have to remind myself to blow it off every few hours, especially if I’m in a dusty country like Botswana or India.
The other important thing to do is to check for sensor spots. It takes an age to remove them once you’ve taken thousands of pictures, so it’s worth getting a sensor cleaning kit with a bottle of cleaning fluid and a few plastic swabs. It’s always a bit nerve-racking when you actually expose the sensor and drag the swab over it both ways, but it’s worth the effort.
Battery Grips
I’ve never had a camera with a built-in battery grip, and I like the flexibility of being able to attach one or not, depending on the circumstances. Mirrorless cameras are supposed to be more power-hungry than DSLRs, but I find that I can take thousands of frames on a single charge—as long as I’m in burst mode.
I have two Sony VGC-4EM Vertical Grips for my two Sony ⍺1 mirrorless cameras, and I used to use them all the time. However, I quickly realised I was hardly ever running out of charge, and the extra comfort and ease of switching from landscape to portrait mode was more than offset by the extra weight and bulk when shooting handheld.
There are arguments on both sides, but on my most recent trip, I decided to compromise. I used a battery grip on the ⍺1 fitted with my 600mm lens but not the one fitted with the 70-200mm. That way, I had a comfortable portrait and landscape grip for most of my shots, but the other camera was light and ‘ready to go’ at short notice if a wildebeest suddenly raced by!
Memory Cards
Lexar 320GB Professional CFexpress Type A Card GOLD Series memory card
I’m a great believer in buying the largest and fastest memory cards you can afford. Nobody wants to be forced to swap cards in the middle of a shoot, and it can cause a lot of stress.
I remember having to do it once at Lake Kerkini in Greece—despite having four Sony 160GB TOUGH CFexpress Type A Flash Memory Cards in my cameras. When one ran out of space, I swapped cards, but then I got a new error message telling me that the old card hadn’t finished writing from the buffer! Fortunately, the problem solved itself when I replaced the old card, but it was touch and go for a moment…
When I got back home, I did some research and bought a couple of Lexar 320GB Professional CFexpress Type A Card GOLD Series memory cards. They were over £500 each, but they were faster and had double the capacity of my old 160GB cards, which made them good value for money.
Battery Chargers
I travel light, so I’ve stopped taking my battery chargers with me. They take up valuable space in my bag, and the 15kg baggage allowance on most internal flights in Africa means I have to be careful.
Instead, I simply take a couple of USB-C cables and charge my cameras overnight by connecting them to my laptop.
The only time this might not work is if I need to charge in a hurry. That might happen if I’m forgetful or I have a problem with one of my batteries. Chargers are always going to be faster than cables, and I appreciated having mine with me when I went to the Hudson Bay in Canada. It was below zero, and all my batteries were dead. I needed to go back to my room to charge them again so I could get back to photographing a polar bear!
Camera Bags
The Tenba Roadie Hybrid Roller 21 - Black
I have several camera bags and portfolio cases cluttering up my storage cupboard:
Tom Bihn Brain Bag with Absolute Shoulder Strap
The Roadie Hybrid Roller 21 is the one I mostly use now. The word ‘hybrid’ just means it’s a rollaboard that you can turn into a backpack by using the straps stored in a pocket on the back. That gives you lots of flexibility—whether you’re lugging it around the airport or dumping it in your room at a safari lodge.
It also has a sleeve on the outside for a tripod. This is obviously handy for those occasions when you need to take your tripod, but the problem is that the new design means it’s on the side—which makes it just too wide to wheel down the passenger aisle of a plane! Tenba obviously didn’t quite think that one through…
Inside, there’s enough room for my cameras, wide-angle lenses and my 600mm lens (with the hood reversed), plus various accessories. There’s even a pocket for my laptop. However, I can’t fit my 400mm lens in there as well. That’s a bit annoying, but I now just carry it over my shoulder in my dry bag whenever I think I’ll need it—and I rarely do!
As I say, I travel very light, so I usually just take my camera bag as hand luggage and don’t check in another bag. There’s a daily laundry service at most safari lodges, so I don’t need more than two outfits.
That means I can simply put all my clothes and other personal items in my jacket. It’s getting a bit old now, but I have a Callaway golf jacket with an inside pocket that goes all the way round the body, so it can carry a LOT of stuff!
I call it my ‘super jacket’. I look a bit like the Michelin man when I’m travelling, but I can cope with all the funny looks…
Computer
As with so many equipment choices, it’s worth getting the best—if you can afford it! In 2021, I bought the latest and greatest Apple MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip, 64 GB of memory, an 8TB hard drive and the fastest possible processor.
I take it on all my photographic trips so that I can transfer all my images after each game drive and then format my memory cards in time for the next one. After that, I generally spend a couple of hours rating all of them.
I like to do that on the day itself, but I’m less obsessive about it than I used to be! After all, it’s nice to be sociable sometimes rather than sitting hunched over my laptop in the bar for hour after hour…
The only problem with my workflow is that I haven’t yet found a suitable way to back up my files. I used to use CrashPlan to do it online, but there isn’t always Wi-Fi in Africa or on board ship, so I let my subscription lapse.
I’ve tried backing up to an external hard drive, but that involves carrying it around with me, which goes against my code of travelling light!
I know I need to find a solution before disaster strikes, but I’m not sure what to do…
Software
I imagine most photographers use Lightroom or Photoshop (or both) to organise and edit their images, and I’m no exception. I mostly use Lightroom, but there are a few things I need to do in Photoshop, such as creating model releases by superimposing a picture on the original form.
I used to use Topaz software programs to sharpen and denoise my images, but I’ve found that Lightroom’s new Enhance feature does a better job of noise reduction without creating any artefacts. It’s slow, but it gets the job done, and I can always use Topaz Photo AI to do a bit of extra sharpening if necessary
Other
I also have a few other items to make life easier:
Spider Camera Holster SpiderPro Dual Camera System.
My SpiderPro belt is very handy for carrying around two camera bodies on a walking safari or just to get from my room to the main area at a safari lodge. However, it does take up room in my camera bag, and it’s not a terribly good use of my 15kg weight limit!Nikon Speedlight SB-910 flashgun with Polaroid Universal Studio Octagon Soft Box Flash Diffuser (18 cm x 18 cm Screen) & Circular reflector (gold/silver/white)
The flashgun needs adapting to the Sony hot shoe mount, but I’ve never used flash for wildlife photography, so I’m not in a rush to do it! The same goes for the reflectors.Opticron DBA VHD+ 10 x 42 binoculars
I won these in a photo contest a few years ago, and they’re worth over £600. However, I don’t tend to take binoculars on photo assignments. Yes, they can make it easier to spot game in the distance, but my guides and drivers usually have pairs to lend me or to use themselves.Beanbag
Some lodges and camps I visit in Africa have beanbags for every guest, but some don’t. I have a beanbag that I can fill with rice or beans, but I only take it with me if I know I’m going to need it.Op/Tech 9001252 Mega Rainsleeve for Camera (Pack of 2) - Clear & Storm Jacket SLR PRO Large & Small - Black
Despite what you might think, it does rain fairly frequently in sub-Saharan Africa, so I always take a couple of rainproof covers just in case. The vehicles I use have roofs and windows, but there are occasionally times when I need to poke my camera out to get a shot.
Verdict
Cleared for take-off…
So there you have it: all the bits and pieces that might come in handy on a photographic trip. Obviously, I spend a lot of time on safari in Africa, so my needs won’t necessarily match yours. However, I’ve gone on photographic trips to all seven continents, and I’ve never needed more than this.
The only thing that changes, really, is my clothing, but that can wait for another day…
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