Photo Gear in Tanzania

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Lenses

It depends on your tastes.  If you are coming to Tanzania to see the wildlife, bring the longest, fastest lenses that you own.  If you are more interested in people and landscape photography, the longest that you would need is a modest telephoto, such as 135mm or 200mm.

The really hardcore wildlife photographers bring their 600mm f/4 and a 1.4X teleconverter with them.  I met 3 or 4 of them in Tanzania.  When I saw someone with a 600mm lens, I immediately looked to their wives and girlfriends.  Without fail, they all looked quite annoyed with their man, and seemed to be relegated to second class citizenship on the safari.  The photographer and his 600mm lens were in the first row of seats, and his girlfriend was in the back row, looking bored.

I just say this as a warning.

The minimal usable focal length for safari is 400mm.  Less than that, and you will come home with "nice" pictures, but no "Wows!".  Would I have liked to have a 600mm lens with me?  Yes.  But it would have been hell to carry, and my wife would have left me!

I brought a 20-35 wide angle zoom lens, a 28-70 2.8L, a 70-200L, a 2X teleconverter and a Canon 300D close-up lens.  I was travelling as lightly as possible, since Tanzania was just one component of a large journey.  Consequently, I sacrificed the ability to capture wildlife perfectly in order to conserve on space.

A lot of people don't like how the 70-200L works with a 2X TC.  I was resonably pleased with the results.  Autofocus was much slower, and hunted a little longer than I would have liked, but the resulting image quality was not as bad as everyone made it out to be.

Tripod/Head, Window Mount and Beanbag

Again, it comes down to priorities.  If you are not very interested in landscape photos, then you don't need to bring a tripod.  Tripods are completely useless on game drives for the obvious reasons.  For drives, you will need either a window mount or a bean bag.

I only saw one guy with a window mount in Ngorongoro crater, but everyone else was using beanbags.  They are very lightweight (if you fill them in-country, rather than back home), and do a great job if you are not taking especially long exposures.  You can buy beans in any local food market in Tanzania, so don't worry about finding something there.

A beanbag protects your camera from vibrations up to a point.  If the driver doesn't turn the car off, nothing will prevent camera shake.  You must insist that your driver turn the car off.  If he doesn't, your pictures will look awful.

I used a Kinesis SafariSack.  It worked perfectly fine.  There is not much science behind a beanbag;  it needs to be large enough to hold your largest lens, and it needs to be durable enough to take the beatings you will give it on the dusty african roads.  Beyond that, there's not much to say about a sack of beans.  I used lentils.  On my next trip, I'm going to look for something a little larger than a lentil.  Maybe some lima beans.  Or perhaps kidney beans.

If you also plan on taking landscape photos, then you would definitely want to take along your tripod as well.  Again, weight was an overwhelming concern for me.  As such, I opted for one of the lightest alternatives: a Gitzo Mountaineer Carbon Fiber (1228).  Part of my justification for buying such a sophisticated set of legs was that I was going to be adding a lot of extra weight with my ball head, an Arca Swiss B1, that I couldn't afford to waste even more on a heavy set of legs.

My Arca Swiss/Gitzo Carbon Fiber combination worked brilliantly.  I carried those bastards up 3 mountains in the freezing cold.  There were many occasions when I cursed the day that tripods were invented.  When it is 5am, and you are exhausted after 4 hours of climbing in 10 degrees F at 13,000ft, when every ounce of weight matters to you, I wanted to throw that damn tripod off the side of Mt. Meru, into the caldera. (My wife also wanted to throw them away a few times.  Preferrably with me attached!)

But I didn't do it!  Thank God.  I hope the photos that I came home with are worthy of the aggravation that the tripod caused me.

Film

For wildlife photography, you will need fast film.  Due to this restriction, I stuck mainly to print film.  I recommend using at least ISO 400 for safari.  In order to see wildlife when it is most active, game drives occur very early in the morning and close to sunset.  Consequently, the need for fast film is exacerbated.  I used Fuji Superia 400 (used to be called Super G+).

For landscapes, I used slides exclusively.  Slide film rated at ISO 100 and below is typically best for landscapes.  Most everyone uses Fuji Velvia as their default landscape film.  I used about 66% Fuji Sensia II (100) and 33% Fuji Velvia.