First, I want to thank the community for discussions on the topic of safari. I just finished two weeks in Kenya and the advice I found here was so helpful. I wanted to share my experience in case it helps others.
One of the biggest issues we were concerned with is the 30 lbs weight limit of luggage. On our trip, we took several small planes to the various camps we stayed at. While they did weigh our luggage for the first flight, they didn't weigh it for the next three and they never weighed our carry-ons, which in my case included a very heavy camera backpack. However, we purchased an extra seat on each of our flights so that our family of four had an extra 160 lbs of luggage weight. I highly recommend this approach as it is not fun stressing about what you can and can't bring with you.
For the trip, I brought four lenses:
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM
- Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM
- Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM Lens
- Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Lens
The big winner for me was the 100-400mm. I probably used this lens 80% of the time. I ran into countless people who had the 70-200 and all of them wished they had just a little more zoom. 400mm was more than enough for me. I konw there are some huge zooms now, but I just never found a situation where I was that far from an animal that I needed that much zoom.
The 70-200 really is an optional lens. The benefit of it is the fact that a lot of the game drives are early in the morning and in the evening. The f-stop allows you to have some zoom in low light which helped me a few times, but given the weight and the fact that you can correct underexposed pictures so easily, it definitely is a nice to have. Fun fact: Kenya is on the equator so sunrise and sunset are SUPER fast. You can google the science behind this, but the low light shooting time is super short because it goes from dusk to dark in 20 or 30 mins.
The 24-105mm, which is my everyday lens, was also clutch. HOWEVER, my big regret was not bringing a second body and leaving this lens on that camera full time. The main issue is that the jeeps get you super close to animals. A nice big zoom gets you in close so you can get great shots, but the inability to zoom out makes it so you can't get good shots of the environment. I ended up with tons of great animal shots, but some of the better scenery shots came from iPhones (which is sad). I spent a lot of time changing lenses on this trip which is not a big deal since you are not driving the truck and have plenty of space, but it would have been much better to have a second camera for the more scenic shots.
The wide angle lens is great to throw in your bag if you have room but easy to leave behind. We visited a few other spots and I love a wide angle for cities and architecture shots.
A couple of final recommendations: One is to make sure you have a good bag. I used my old Tamrac 5550 Adventure 10 and fell in love with this bag all over again. The clips on the camera section were super helpful to quickly lock in my lenses. Several times I walked all the way to my tent in the dark and realized when I got there I never zipped it up, but everything stayed secured thanks to the clip system. I put the two large lenses in the bottom section and used the top for a set up camera and a few other necessities. The second recommendation is to get a monopod. A cheap one is fine. I took a lot of pictures and it was nice to be able to reduce the weight of the lens as well as get some additional stability so I could shoot at a slower shutter speed.
Here are some example shots
It looks like we were almost on the same safari, same time, as we have some very similar photos. Nice shots! I am still on the road but was preparing to present my "findings" (so to speak) here in relation to my original question. I will post here in a few days. But you seem to have had similar experiences to mine and I agree with your suggestions, although I had a different solution which worked for me....
Good comments since I last looked in and some really nice shots. I haven't been to Kenya since the '70's but still the pictures are familiar. On our last trip to Zimbabwe we took RF100-500's, a RF70-200 2.8, an 800 f-11, and a 14-35.
Our addition for next years trip to Mozambique will be the new RF 100-300 2.8. The other thing that I, like everyone these days, carried was a cell phone. It is a simple truth that the best shots are taken with the camera that you have.
This shot was a 100-500:
