SLR Camera Recommendations
 

I am travelling on a 25 day overland tour and have purchased a Nikon D60 camera for the trip. I plan on buying an additional lens (55-200mm) and battery prior to leaving. I am also thinking about buying a flash but do not know if it is worth the $300, does anyone know if I will get any photos on night drives that would warrent the money spent on a flash? As well I am looking at getting an electronic photo storage unit so I dont have to carry large amounts of memory. Has anyone purchased one and how do you like it?

Thanks.

I went on a 16 day African safari in 2005 and like you, bought a new camera for the trip. The zoom lens was definitely worth the cost, as it allows you the close up photos you dream about. Definitely take along an extra battery. You may not need it, but better to be safe than kicking yourself later.

As for the flash, my experience was that it was useless on night game drives. All you get (if you're lucky) are two glowing eyeballs in the photo. My advice would be to just enjoy what you see on the night drives and don't worry about trying to get a picture. Trust me, you'll have plenty of opportunities for pictures during the day.

I took over 800 pictures on my trip, and I thought I was being conservative. If you can bring something to store your photos on, you'll be glad you did.

The only other advice I'd have on photo equipment is to bring along a sandbag to rest your camera on while shooting. (Mine is called a "Pod".) The bottom of your Nikon should have a threaded hole for just this purpose. The sandbag is a little larger than a hockey puck and it screws into the bottom of your camera. It allows you to balance the camera to keep the shot steady. I was able to rest it on the bar of the jeep and it worked great. They're inexpensive and useful if you'll be doing drives in a jeep. Bring cleaning cloths as well since the dust leaves a film on your lenses.

Have a great time. I still consider my African trip to be the best trip I've ever taken.

Wow, thanks that was exactly the info I was looking for. I think I will probably leave the flash as I dont think I will use it again after the trip and it is costly. Thanks for the tips.

You will need a long zoom like the 55-200mm, or even longer.
The D60 has a pop up flash, it will work ok if you're within say 20 feet of the subject. Try it, throw your cat outside at night and take its photo. It is also good for fill-in flash if the subject is in deep shadows in sun light surroundings. I doubt if you would use another flash (SB400, SB600) enough to justify the $$$. Also, the headlights and spotlights used on vehicles at night are very bright, even if narrow, but you can get decent shots just from those.

Memory - If you think you will need only about 20gig then I'd just use cards. Five, four gig cards about $100. The D60 gives you large fine jpgs at 5meg bytes each. So that's 200 photos per gig. 20gig of cards, 4,000 photos. I do use a drive for photo storage but my units are not even made any more. Some one with current usage of this will have to advise you.

regards - tom

I use a Canon setup and I never do any wildlife photography without taking along both my external flash (580EXII) and a "better beamer," which is a lens that focuses and extends the effective range of the flash. I find it absolutely essential for daytime photography of wildlife because it allows for shadows to be illuminated, or for me to shoot backlit subjects, or subjects in deep shade. The closest I ever came to shooting with it at night was some bears in the Smoky Mountains after sunset in deep forest cover, and it performed wonders for me and allowed me to get shots I would never have been able to get without it (see samples below). When I go to Africa again next year, I will definitely be taking at least one external flash, and maybe two so that my wife can use one too. The effective range of the flash with a better beamer is easily 75-100 feet.

Here are examples of shots taken with the external flash and better beamer:
(1) Bears -- taken in extreme low light
http://www.pbase.com/cwillis/image/97877799/original
(2) Tricolored Heron Chick in flight -- notice no shadows on the undersides of the wings?
http://www.pbase.com/cwillis/image/99652667
(3) Cattle Egret on very dark, overcast day
http://www.pbase.com/cwillis/image/95878549
(4) Severely backlit red-shoudlered hawk chick, an impossible shot without flash
http://www.pbase.com/cwillis/image/98352920

So, I would respond to your question by urging you to take a flash for daytime use whenever conditions require it. If it helps for night shots (which I suspect it will), that is just a bonus. And get the best one Nikon makes (which is the SB800, I think). You will want as much power as you can get for wildlife shots.

For image storage I use Hyperdrive products (www.hyperdrive.com). They have various models with different capacities depending on what you want, but they are very fast, have excellent battery life, and I have used two of them on our last two trips to store over 220GB of pictures without a single problem. I highly recommend them.

Chris