{"id":77,"date":"2006-03-10T00:08:45","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T23:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/2006\/03\/10\/bag-contents-for-my-photo-safari\/"},"modified":"2006-09-30T15:39:17","modified_gmt":"2006-09-30T14:39:17","slug":"bag-contents-for-my-photo-safari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/2006\/03\/10\/bag-contents-for-my-photo-safari\/","title":{"rendered":"Bag contents for my photo safari"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As my friends and the readers of this web site already know, I am ready to leave for a photo safari in Kenya. In such a trip, the question of what you need to bring with you is always an important one. As a matter of fact, you cannot (or don&#8217;t want to) be loaded like a beast of bruden, but it would be a pity to travel 10,000 km to discover that you forgot an important part of your photo equipment or that you are taking an unexpected risk.<\/p>\n<p>If my bag description can be considered representative or useful (I still try to make it as simple as possible), I invite you to check it with me.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h4>Photo bag<\/h4>\n<p>First things, first: I need to consider what photo equipment to bring with me (keeping in mind that I am now defintely a digital photographer despite my previous life with argentic films).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A bag (Lowepro or similar) or a case: I am not sure that I can definitely choose between them; For a long time, I used a metal case that was the perfect protection but is so heavy that I tend to leave it behind; Now, I prefer a flexible shoulder bag or a good backpack with fair protection (like my new Lowepro Mini Trekker AW).<\/li>\n<p>\t<img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image20\" src=\"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/fr\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/minolta.gif\" alt=\"Konica-Minolta\" align=\"right\"\/><\/p>\n<li>An SLR body: my Konica-Minolta Dynax 7D, of course.<\/li>\n<li>Possibly a spare SLR body: But only if this is not too much weight and too much money drain (you can never protect you against all the risks, anyway).<\/li>\n<li>Tele-lens: You&#8217;re going to photo-hunt animals, so you need a long tele (like my old faithful Sigma 400mm f\/5.6) even if the diaphragm aperture is not very large which should not be much of a problem in a sunny country like Kenya.<\/li>\n<li>Tele-lens: in some case, light will be more limited than the possibility to approach the animals; Maybe not in Kenya, but photo in the dawn or at sunset could be more difficult without a good large aperture tele-lens like my Minolta 200mm f\/2.8 ApoG; It will come with me.<\/li>\n<li>A trans-standard zoom: Think about landscapes too (a nice little postcard as a souvenir of the trip is not something you will want to avoid; traveling is also a matter of keeping image of nice countries).<\/li>\n<li>A flash, preferably a powerful one since it will only be used in wide wild spaces when you will try to add a touch of light to a photo at the end of the day; I bring the Minolta 5600HS D (A powerful cobra flash that is quite compact).<\/li>\n<li>Memory cards: 2 Flash cards of 1GB capacity (think redundancy).<\/li>\n<li>A portable disk drive to empty the Flash cards: The Compact Drive PD70X (60 GB version) that you saw described here for the few last months (fast, compact, operating from standard LR6\/AA batteries).<\/li>\n<li>Spare batteries: It weights nearly nothing and it would be awful to wait for a full charge of the battery before being able to go back to your (not so) patient animal models.<\/li>\n<li>Miscellaneous:<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>polarizing filter,<\/li>\n<li>supplementary macro lens for the random macro photo,<\/li>\n<li>etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>The traditional bag<\/h4>\n<p>Of course, we are not only photographers, we are mere travellers. There, the good advice of our mothers or families are welcome as they were the first time we left our homes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bring clothes chosen according to the local climate and weather (your agent will give you sound advice, of course). For Kenya, remember that it is a hot country (light clothes, soft trousers, bermudas or jean and T-shirts), that the sun is high in the sky around the equator (a hat or a cap and prefer long sleeves), but that it may be cold or humid at night (a pull over and a K-Way or a poncho will be going to the bottom of the bag).<\/li>\n<li>Bring the battery cahrgers, preferably checking what kind of plugs are needed (either 12V plug in a car, or 100-245V main local power with adaptation plugs).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Others<\/h4>\n<p>I think that a few other things may be useful and it is not always easy to remember about them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n\t<img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image74\" src=\"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/fr\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/onedollar.miniature.jpg\" alt=\"One dollar bill\" align=\"right\"\/><\/p>\n<li>Some cash: for the tips (or backshish&#8217;s in some countries), without forgetting that the Euro is becoming more and more indentified in the world, but that the US dollar language is still understood everywhere around the globe.<\/li>\n<li>Your vacine shots should be up-to-date and you need to bring the adequate malaria\/paludism drugs: In France, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pasteur.fr\/english.html\">Institut Pasteur (English pages)<\/a> will tell you all about these and could even be where you will get your vaccines; Beware! This is something too many tourists tend to forget. The cost of the shots and drugs is very significant and there is usually a minimum delay between the shots and the beginning of the trip.<\/li>\n<li>An insect repllent: Critically important in geographical zones submitted to the risk of malaria where a repellent associated to long sleeves and a night mosquito net are still the best protection against this dangerous endemic sickness.<\/li>\n<li>Your passport possibly with the needed visa: Always check early at the embassy of the country you want to got to (and also of the countries you may have to stop into during a plane stop-over); This is not always as difficult as with the United States of America where regulations are toughened every year, but a missing visa may be ruining your travel and leaving you at home (without any possible solution).<\/li>\n<li>Last but not least, do not forget the plane ticket and other tickets or documents provided by your travel agent.<\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a class=\"imagelink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.objectif-nature.tm.fr\/\" title=\"Logo Objectif Nature - sp\u00c3\u00a9cialiste du voyage naturaliste et du safari photo\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image83\" src=\"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/fr\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/logo-onature.jpg\" alt=\"Logo Objectif Nature - sp\u00c3\u00a9cialiste du voyage naturaliste et du safari photo\" align=\"left\"\/><\/a>To conclude these lists, I would like to point that, even if most of these ideas are coming from my own thinking and research, I want to thank <a href=\"http:\/\/www.objectif-nature.tm.fr\/\">Objectif Nature<\/a> which provided a very good way to check all this with its own travel checklist (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.objectif-nature.tm.fr\/\">Objectif Nature<\/a> is also the agent I use to plan and organize my own Kenya photo safari in 2006).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As my friends and the readers of this web site already know, I am ready to leave for a photo safari in Kenya. In such a trip, the question of what you need to bring with you is always an important one. As a matter of fact, you cannot (or don&#8217;t want to) be loaded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photo-safari","category-wildlife-photo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}