Africa: Kenya and Tanzania

In October of 2006 I travelled Kenya and Tanzania on a 19 day safari through Bongo Asili Travel. Packed with me was a full set of Pentax lenses and (almost) all other equipment one could use on a safari trip like this.


My complete set consited of the following items:
- One *ist-DS body (my girlfriend carried a spare DS)
- The FA* 80-200/2.8
- The FA* 28-70/2.8
- The FA* 300/4.5
- The A* 200/4.0 macro
- The FA 50/1.4
- The F 1.7x converter
- A Tamron autofocus 1.4x converter
- 80GB backup drive
- Batteries, charger and sensor brushed

All in all quite a big set which topped at 11 kilo's, I'm glad they didn't weigh in my hand luggage at the airport ;-).

Now, what was usefull to me?
I did expected to use the 80-200 most of the time, but even though our driver got us to some of the best and closest spots, this range was even with the 1.5x crop factor of a digital body not enough. I ended up using the FA* 300/4.5 most of the time and this lens gave me in the end a lot of images that needed no further cropping.
The dust was horrendous on the camera and the sensor and I didn't swap lenses as much as I wanted to. Next time an investment in a two camera setup is well worth the money spend.

Sightings
We manged to see all "must" see species during the complete trip with the Leopard being the last and the hardest. Most impressive were the lions eating from a freshly killed zebra and the vultures feeding on a young zebra that died from exhaustion. Ample of birds were sighted but you definately can bring a 500 or 600mm lens to get the best shots of them. Kenya and expecially the Masai Mara gave us the best of the scenery and the wildlife. Should we return to Africa it will no doubt be a Kenya only safari to have more time to stay in one place to get the best images possible.

All in all a great trip with a big bag of photos that will decorate our walls for the coming years ;-)