Hi everybody! Welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
Adorama TV. I'm Mark Wallace and joining me
is Elsa Hoffman, she is the owner and
operator of Photo Tours - Cape Town, in
Cape Town, South Africa, and she has
brought me here to Fairy Glen Game
Reserve.
That's right. Ok, and we're going to be
shooting the big 5! Zebra's and rhinos,
lion, buffalo, elephant. It's very fantastic and
the drive here was spectacularly
beautiful and on the way I was surprised
that there were wild baboons and that
sort of was the precursor to what I
think we're going to experience tomorrow
on our mini safari. So I want to show you
this clip of us encountering these
baboons along the way.
I'm shooting this with the 600 mm
lens, I'm not very close to
this guy but I don't want to move
because when I do he runs away.
So there's a whole family out here, just
zipping back and forth across the road
it's quite amazing.
We were just driving down the road and
saw them
Is that pretty common that we have
baboons just zipping around the side of
the road
Yes, yes it. Yeah, we're just driving
along, I'm totally unprepared ...baboons!
There's a guy right here.. check this out!...here he is...
Well I showed you that because I think
also that is the sort of the crux of
what we're about to experience, which is
expect the unexpected! We don't know
what's coming at us and so we have all
this gear here that we want to talk
about and Elsa's walked me through what she
thinks that we need to have ready to go
and so what do we have out here.
I know I have my steps I'm going to try to
shoot a few things with my Leica, got my
135mm lens,
my normal MeFoto Tripod to try to
stabilize the camera when necessary, but
Elsa had some really good advice about
the cameras and lenses were actually
gonna be shooting with some Nikon
cameras tomorrow, so can you walk us
through the lenses that you recommended
and why. in the game reserve you never know
how close the animals are going to be to
you, so you have to be prepared for the
very close ups, and the ones that are far
away, some animals are more skittish than
others, so I use specifically zoom lenses
when I do wildlife, because they also
move. And when they come closer to you
you don't want to be stuck, now I'm
sitting with a prime, I start with it 200-500
for my further away stuff. 200-500 Nikon 5.6
then i have the 70-200.
Is this the 2.8 that's the 2.8 VRII. image
stabilised... so we've got some image
stabilization going here, if you see us
shooting handheld - that might be one of
the reasons why. Animals move, so you
based shoot handheld. Yeah, in fact,
speaking of animals moving, and the
unexpected,
I don't want to cut you off here, but I
really would love to illustrate the
point of why you really do need a zoom lens
for an adventure like this, it's because
you never know when an animal is just
going to be right there
so on the way into the park, I started
seeing things and I told Elsa to stop the
car cause I wanted to shoot, and well here
just look and see what happens
just behind me here, are gazelles and
zebras, check this out....
Right over there there's a rescued rhino..
with this horn that was taken off by
poachers and they've saved him and are
doing some preservation and rescue work
here. It's very amazing, so we're just on
day one scouting and seeing what's
available and already I'm a little bit
overwhelmed. I haven't even taken a single
picture and just shooting video
Elsa has loaned me this camera, this is a
Nikon D800 with a 200-500 mm lens
and just to sort of get a feel of
what's gonna happen I'm going to go take
some shots, even though this is
officially the first of the shooting,
I just can't pass up shooting these...
pyjama donkeys... that's what they call them here... zebras
So let's go we have to sort of be quiet,
I am shooting this handheld at 3,200th of
a second so eventually we'll put this on
a tripod but for now going to do that,
I'm shooting ISO 800. See how it turns
out.
Lets go.. (whisper... ). You might be wondering why I'm
not getting closer to these animals using a
basically a 600 mm equivalent,
the answer is simple,
these are wild animals, and they will kill you
and so we're keeping our distance using
really, really, long lenses and we're gonna
drive down the road just a bit. You see
the road behind me here, just a lot more
things to see and do.
We've just gotten started, and already
it's ah, it's really wonderful, a traffic jam
here.
Who gets to do this?...this is crazy... right over here
here he is...!
So as you can see if I have a zoom lens
like you're talking about, instead of
this prime here, that zebra shot would
have been spectacular, I think it's
pretty good right now but we don't see
the entire Zebra, we don't get all the
action, we don't see its hooves, and so if
we had maybe the 70-200, I could have just zoomed out
a little bit, and that would have been so
much better, although I have to say, that
was some cool stuff!
I'm so excited for tomorrow, alright we
have one more lens to talk about. What is
this?... and why do we need it?
The 24-70mm is for the animals that are
quite big, and that come quite close to
you, but also you need something to shoot
some environmental stuff, you want to
have the animal in its natural habitat,
and show the surroundings as well.
Tomorrow we're getting up early in the
morning and have breakfast and then
we're gonna go out for a few hours and
we're gonna take photos of these amazing
animals. I am so excited to do this we
thought we were finished for the evening
but Fairy Glen had different plans, they
invited us for an evening nature walk
and some really amazing things happen.
We are now going on a
nature walk. Yes. We're on this thing!
We are gonna to go and see lions!
So secured right now.
Unfortunately we took so much time
talking about what we're going to be
doing tomorrow that were out of time and
so you'll have to join us for the next
episode of Exploring Photography to see
the actual game reserve adventure so
make sure you join us here on AdoramaTV
for the next episode don't forget to
subscribe to AdoramaTV, it's absolutely
free, that way you don't miss the next
episode of the big five and all that
shooting and also check out the Adorama
Learning Center for more information on
how to shoot video and stills and all
that kind of stuff. Thank you Elsa, I can't
wait for tomorrow. It's gonna be great!
Don't miss it! Join in right here on
AdoramaTV for our big five adventure