Ok, we landed, deplaned, and were met immediately by Lawrence from African Travel, who was super helpful and got us set up to clear customs and took our bags while we did. Quite lovely. Derek then joined us and walked us over to the covid testing site at the Intercontinental. We paid for our tests, got our nostrils tickled, then headed to the hotel shuttle. Rode the shuttle to the Protea Hotel (on airport grounds) and set up here. Tomorrow we fly to Botswana at noon – that’s where the photography fun starts!

So let’s talk GEAR! Here’s all the gear I brought with me. I made some late decisions, and in a few cases may have been able to do better decisions, but live and learn. Here’s the whole mess set up on the desk:

Focusing in on camera gear:

  • Camera body is a Sony A7Riv mirrorless full-frame 61mp camera with image stabilization with two high-speed 128GB SD cards. I have it on a Hawkesmill wrist strap, which I adore, but have a backup neck strap on quick snaps.
  • I have two extra batteries for this and a pro-master charger which is powered by USB. I can charge one battery in the camera, and one in the charger. I figure my normal will be “one in the camera, one in the bag, one on the charger back at the lodge.”
  • I brought 4 lenses:
    • Sony FE 4.5-5.6/100mm-400mm GM OSS – this will be the go-to in the field. I also brought a Sony 2.0 teleconverter that darkens this lens a full stop, but also doubles its magnification so it becomes 200mm-800mm.
    • Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 – this will cover all normal/close in shooting, if the 100-400 is just TOO CLOSE
    • Sony FE 2.8/12mm-24mm – this one is for the big sunsets, sweeping Savannah, wide shots of Victoria Falls . . .
    • Sony FE 2.8/90mm MACRO G OSS – this is probably my favorite overall lens, and will serve if I do find things to shoot VERY CLOSE UP, e.g. bugs or flowers.
  • I also brought a Giotto Rocket Air to blow dust off of gear, and a couple of Glazer’s lens cloths.
  • Time exposures, very long range telephoto, etc. all want a tripod. I went with the Peak Design travel tripod (carbon fiber) because it packs super small, is pretty light (about 2# all in), and is compatible with the peak design quick release I use on my camera bag, which is a . . .
  • Peak Design Every Day Sling 10L with a peak design quick release foot attached to the strap (so in the field, the camera is outside the bag). Everything listed above, except the tripod and the macro lens, fits in the camera bag for transport.

Ok, then there’s the stuff to get photos off the camera and process them (and write this blog, etc). For that, I ended up going with

  • a Microsoft Surface Go 2, because it packs up small, acts like a tablet on aircraft, etc. I bought this dedicated for this trip. It has Lightroom Classic, WordPress, Netflix and Spotify on it. And personal email. It is NOT able to access work resources, because it is not managed/monitored by corp – that’s to keep me from working, not because I am worried about Dustin’s team (I work on a bunch of this tech and absolutely believe devices accessing corp resources need to be monitored/managed – malware is a *thing*).
  • I have a Logitech MX Anywhere 2S Mouse to make editing easier
  • A Microsoft designer bluetooth compact keyboard (Keyboard covers that are so awesome on the surface were sold out, unfortunately)
  • I carry two Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD drives at 2TB storage each in a case to get the photos off the cards and get some redudancy (PC, SD, SSD) for the photos. These are my normal “working with lightroom” drives so it is super easy to set up a catalog, etc.
  • I use a Tiergrade USB Type C Hub Pro in part because I can feed it my SD cards directly and get fast backup, it has a huge raft of USB-A ports I can use for charging, does HDMI out, ethernet in, and it relatively tiny. Normal edit usage will have the SSD drive in one port, an SD card in another, all tied together into the surface via this thing.

Ok, Phew, what’s left?

  • I carry a big Belkin battery in case something needs emergency power (like a cell phone). I don’t remember how many milliamps, but its a lot, 80k-100k. Enough to charge my phone 4x if I recall.
  • I carry a belkin 4 port USB hub – this is just so I can charge more devices (watches, phones, camera batteries, the belkin battery, etc. are all greedy bastards).

Clothing:

  • Ex-officio undies and socks x6 (the socks have bug-guard)
  • 2x zip off pants (convertible to shorts). One of them is ex officio and has bug guard. The other are Columbia and do not.
  • A Bison ultra-light belt with a plastic buckle (for airports)
  • 3 long sleeve ex-officio shirts with bug guard
  • 3 short sleeve shirts, 2 ex officio with bug guard, one REI without.
  • An REI Cotton/Poly blend pullover hoodie (very thin, but combines with other layers to get some warmth)
  • An ex-officio safari vest.
  • My favorite sailing hat (basically, a soft hat that has an all around brim and vents
  • A pair of new balance hiking shoes.
  • A pair of vuori shorts that I can sleep, swim, scuba, whatever else in (when I long haul, step one is always “change to jammies” then an hour before landing, I switch back to street clothes so I don’t feel totally gross but don’t burn an outfit. These shorts are “jammies”)

All of that, plus some spare cables, masks, etc all fits into a North Face Base Camp 50L duffel. Altogether, it all comes in JUST under the 33# weight limit for the bush planes. 32.4#. 17.5# of that is camera gear, a few more pounds is computer, so I am at less that 10# of clothing.

Now to take all this tech and try to make some art 😉 If you are looking at a trip like this, hopefully this helps you out. I will try to post my learnings on the gear as I go. I can say now that I wish I had bought a photographers vest, not the ex-officio, only because having pockets that would swallow lenses would be magic in the field. I may pick one up in Nairobi (10 days from now).

Thanks for letting me geek out!