This thread seems to have become the de-facto wildlife safari destination .
My question is not about Africa, but hoping I will get some answers here. We are planning a trip to Sri Lanka in November this year for general tourism and I was wondering if adding a few days at the Yala National Park is a good idea. There does not seem to be much information anywhere except places like Tripadvisor.
Primus wrote:
This thread seems to have become the de-facto wildlife safari destination .
My question is not about Africa, but hoping I will get some answers here. We are planning a trip to Sri Lanka in November this year for general tourism and I was wondering if adding a few days at the Yala National Park is a good idea. There does not seem to be much information anywhere except places like Tripadvisor.
Anybody been there? Any thoughts, tips? TIA
We traveled to Sri Lanka a few years ago and spent several days in each of the two Aman hotels: Amanwella and Amangalla. They are both beautiful hotels with superb amenities and dining, ideal locations, utmost hospitality, and many activities. We visited Udalawalae National Park when staying at Amanwella but it doesn't rise to the level of wildlife sightings when compared to African safaris. Yala National Park was an extended distance from Amanwella and consequently we decided to consolidate our time with closer destinations. We enjoyed tours of cinnamon and tea plantations. The beach at Amanwella is beautiful and the town of Galle associated with Amangalla is a great location.
Both hotels can assist you with ensuring that your time is well spent to meet your expectations. They can provide answers consistent with your travel goals.
Enjoy
eke2k6 wrote:
Your A7R5 is actually a spectacular video camera, with all of Sony's latest bells and whistles. Make sure you shoot in 10-bit SLOG3. Plenty of youtube tutorials to see how. **By far** the biggest tip I can tell you is get acquainted with the custom dials/memory recall function to allow you to easily switch between photo and video while preserving your settings/picture profiles in each. I have one mode set for 4K 24p video, another for 4K 60p, and the other for 1080 120p, all with the requisite settings and stabilization modes I use most.
Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I did watch a YouTube video on how to set this up. In fact, I found the setting to "unlink" the photo and video memory so that I can switch between video and camera and all the settings go back to what they were before for each mode. On the camera side, I have the custom 1, 2 and 3 set, and I also have all the custom buttons set. This took a while as might be expected as I experimented during a a few trips to Costa Rica. Only then do you realize "it would be way easier if there was a way to...." and bam the A7R5 is so customizable that there is, in fact, a way. And then it's time to go out again and work on the finger muscle memory. This is why I upgraded to the A7R5 a year in advance of the trip to Africa - one does not go to the olympics of photography without training training training! Attached are a few of my first birding attempts.
As for video, I know nothing at all about video. So I watched a YouTube video for 50 minutes and copied what I learned. I set up the main menus for 24 fps and shutter to 1/50 and ISO to 800, I learned about setting while balance manually, I set to XAVC HS 4K, 100M 4:2:2 10bit, turned log shooting on, and set it to S-Gamut3.Cine/S-Log3. I learned about S&Q settings which might be cool for a running animal or a time lapse sunset (I'll bring a tiny desktop tripod) and learned about autofocus. All of this is set to custom 1 on the video side. You mention that you "have one mode set for 4K 24p video, another for 4K 60p, and the other for 1080 120p, all with the requisite settings and stabilization modes I use most." I am not there yet! I have not even shot a single clip with the present settings. But I then watched a video on how to color grade in Final Cut Pro which I just purchased. So I am at the very very beginning of learning video - but I have 6 months to learn it. I liked your video and cinematography styles. Looking forward to learning this skill.
artsupreme wrote:
A couple things I would suggest:
1. Bring a 2x along as well. It's fun to play with different focal lengths and you also mentioned birds, so it would be good to have it. It works great on your 300mm.
2. Rent another A7R5 if possible. I'm not sure of the differences in Sony bodies but it will be really nice to have two identical bodies, one mounted to the 300 and the other to the 70-200. You will use these 90% of the time. Keep the third mounted to your 16-35 and you don't have to change lenses other than adding/removing the TC. If needed, the only place you could reduce weight is if Sony had a lighter weight 16-35 f/4.
Thanks for your reply (and thanks for starting the thread!). In response to your great points,
1. I have my eye on the 2X but my thought is that our vehicles will travel off-road so maybe it's too much reach, particularly given the A7R5 and ability to crop images, or shoot in APS-C when needed. Would be cool for birds but I can't see myself changing it back and forth. And then there is your point #2.
2. I don't want to rent another A7R5. I want to buy it lol!! Now that I have my primary body, I can't go backwards! I want to sell the A7Rii and some other gear I don't use from back in my canon days and just pull the trigger without too much financial hurt. This way I can always have 2 of the same bodies and keep it simple. This tech is hard enough as it is! Maybe I do that and sell the A7Rii after the trip as you suggest.
Below are a few from the South Africa safari 8 years ago. Looking forward to being an ongoing contributor to this thread and paying it forward.
Primus wrote:
Great ideas and you will have an absolutely marvelous time. I can add a couple of things to the already wonderful suggestions.
1. See if you can buy/rent the 200-600 G lens. It is absolutely super sharp and on one of my trips I took this one and the 600 f4, and I can tell you, it gave the big buy a run for the money. The other option of course is to add a 2X to the 300 2.8 as has been suggested. I think this will give you more flexibility though.
2. A photo vest is a much neglected accessory, almost forgotten these days. I never travel without my Billingham vest. It is perhaps the most ingenious photo accessory ever made. I had another one from some other company, but this one is not only super useful but also looks great. You can travel pretty much everywhere with it.
3. If you are staying at the Kicheche camp in Naboisho, you may be able to get their 'photography' vehicle which is modified to let the entire left side down. The left sided seats in the front and middle row have been removed and a mattress placed there so you can lie down and rest your camera on the open side of the vehicle which is now a table top. Great perspective to shoot from. They do charge a bit extra for this. My best leopard experience was at Naboisho, so you are likely to have a great time.
4. I often take short video clips with my Sony Alpha1. What I've discovered is that not only is it fun to look at some of the videos later, but you can export single frames, although you only get a jpg out of it. Still, one minute of video at 30fps gives you 1800 frames and takes up very little space on an SD card whereas you would fill up an entire 128G card with that many stills shot in RAW. Hard to beat that if you do not mind the jpgs.
anotherhobby wrote:
Thanks for your reply (and thanks for starting the thread!). In response to your great points,
1. I have my eye on the 2X but my thought is that our vehicles will travel off-road so maybe it's too much reach, particularly given the A7R5 and ability to crop images, or shoot in APS-C when needed. Would be cool for birds but I can't see myself changing it back and forth. And then there is your point #2.
2. I don't want to rent another A7R5. I want to buy it lol!! Now that I have my primary body, I can't go backwards! I want to sell the A7Rii and some other gear I don't use from back in my canon days and just pull the trigger without too much financial hurt. This way I can always have 2 of the same bodies and keep it simple. This tech is hard enough as it is! Maybe I do that and sell the A7Rii after the trip as you suggest.
Below are a few from the South Africa safari 8 years ago. Looking forward to being an ongoing contributor to this thread and paying it forward.
Nice shots. For the 2x, you won't need it but you might want it. As you know, even when driving off-road you can still shoot things at all focal lengths just to mix it up. And you'll have the time and space to easily swap it in/out with your own private vehicle. I don't use it a ton, but I wouldn't go there without one. There's always a small bird on a stick, an eagle in a tree, or a big animal in the distance that you can shoot at 600mm. I also like shooting sunrise/sunsets between 400mm and 600mm occasionally.
As for the second A7RV, if you are part of the B&S community you can't go wrong to buy one here and then sell it after your Safari for less than what you would pay to rent one. That would be my plan if I was you. I would have (2) A7RV's and your 3rd body mounted to your wide angle. You have plenty of space in your vehicle to lay out all your gear. Then just sell whatever gear you need to on CL or the B&S when you get home.
For video, I would definitely get your three custom presets setup to 24p, 60p, and 120p. Being that you probably aren't going to be messing around with ND filters, you'll likely have to shoot 120p most of the time in good light, and sometimes 60p in lower light if you are following the 180 shutter rule.
anotherhobby wrote:
Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I did watch a YouTube video on how to set this up. In fact, I found the setting to "unlink" the photo and video memory so that I can switch between video and camera and all the settings go back to what they were before for each mode. On the camera side, I have the custom 1, 2 and 3 set, and I also have all the custom buttons set. This took a while as might be expected as I experimented during a a few trips to Costa Rica. Only then do you realize "it would be way easier if there was a way to...." and bam the A7R5 is so customizable that there is, in fact, a way. And then it's time to go out again and work on the finger muscle memory. This is why I upgraded to the A7R5 a year in advance of the trip to Africa - one does not go to the olympics of photography without training training training! Attached are a few of my first birding attempts.
As for video, I know nothing at all about video. So I watched a YouTube video for 50 minutes and copied what I learned. I set up the main menus for 24 fps and shutter to 1/50 and ISO to 800, I learned about setting while balance manually, I set to XAVC HS 4K, 100M 4:2:2 10bit, turned log shooting on, and set it to S-Gamut3.Cine/S-Log3. I learned about S&Q settings which might be cool for a running animal or a time lapse sunset (I'll bring a tiny desktop tripod) and learned about autofocus. All of this is set to custom 1 on the video side. You mention that you "have one mode set for 4K 24p video, another for 4K 60p, and the other for 1080 120p, all with the requisite settings and stabilization modes I use most." I am not there yet! I have not even shot a single clip with the present settings. But I then watched a video on how to color grade in Final Cut Pro which I just purchased. So I am at the very very beginning of learning video - but I have 6 months to learn it. I liked your video and cinematography styles. Looking forward to learning this skill.
I posted my last safari video many pages ago, here a link if you have missed it:
Video has many more challenges than photography but is also a lot of fun.
My suggestions in order of importance:
1. Focus is the most important thing that you need to learn how to master. OOF video or focus hunting is just bad. I relay a lot on AF but I change quite a bit the settings depending on what I'm doing. I also MF when it makes more sense.
2. Stability, this is a challenge on jeep as every one that moves will make your camera shake, IS and post stabilization help a bit. I do film from a bean bag and a fluid head mounted on the jeep but when needed e.g. cheetah runs also handheld.
3. Camera movements, this is kind of the opposite of 2. If you watch modern wildlife films, they tend to not shoot from a static tripod a lot but with the camera moving. My above video has tons of examples but is a challenge to do on a safari. Some panning from a tripod is a start but is "old" style. Ideally you want both the animals and the camera to move.
4. Editing, this is logic but is also hard and time consuming
5. Color grading, I'm not good at this but it makes a huge difference in the final output.
6. 180 shutter rule, ideally you want to stick with this but is not always possible. Some suggested to shoot 1080 120fps so you don't have to use ND but imo is not a good idea. Watching a movie all in slow motion is super boring and if you accelerate it back to real time you have a shutter speed of 1/240.... so why not just film in 4k at 1/240 and have a much better quality. One trick that you can do is to shoot 48fps (or 50fps) but at 1/48 or 1/50 so you can decide what part you want to slow down in post but all the real time parts are correctly, of course the slow motion part will have a bit too much blur but depending on the scene you will not even notice. Ideally you need NDs but you can also shoot at F16-F22 and not have a shallow DoF this is a compromise that you need to think about.
7. Audio, this is super tricky on a jeep with people talking, distance from the subject and even more if you use the jeep (motor noise) to create movements as I do, so I had to do all in post.
From this morning. Sometimes you need to use the mobile phone.
I have left the 2nd Camera with the wide angle lens on the jeep.
The wild dogs were really curious about my 400.
This is one of the things which makes Tswalu so special.
Yep. I would stay clear of Tanzania until they clean this up. Lots of petitions and other things happening. It is a disgrace and an utter head scratcher. They shoot them and burn the carcasses! Sorry - I just find it heartbreaking and am very angry about this. They can't think this will go over well in the long run, just a travesty.
berimbolo wrote:
The conservancies in the Mara have rules about the number of vehicles at each animal sighting. Most of the NR does not. As far as I know, only the Mara Triangle has a 5 car (maybe 3 car) limit at an animal sighting.
I would more strongly consider other parks in Africa, like Lower Zambezi, South Luangwa and Mana Pools, but I haven't gotten good recommendations from anyone, and the flights are shit
What recommendations do you need for Zambia? Flights are pretty straightforward, lovely camps aplenty and great guiding. I've been there a few times and highly recommend it. In fact, Zambia was the very first country I visited in Africa.
Woo hoo.....Heading back to Africa February 2025 with Pangolin Photo. Amboseli, The Mara, Sumburu, Shampole, and maybe Lewa. Just got confirmation they accepted my deposit.
R5 MkII by then hopefully.
Alan Kefauver wrote:
Woo hoo.....Heading back to Africa February 2025 with Pangolin Photo. Amboseli, The Mara, Sumburu, Shampole, and maybe Lewa. Just got confirmation they accepted my deposit.
R5 MkII by then hopefully.
Awesome, congratulations! I'm headed that way this June, counting the days! We are doing Lewa and I am super excited about it. I don't see or here much from that area here it seems, so I'm anxious to try it out,. It looks amazing. Hope you have a great trip!
Sharona wrote:
What recommendations do you need for Zambia? Flights are pretty straightforward, lovely camps aplenty and great guiding. I've been there a few times and highly recommend it. In fact, Zambia was the very first country I visited in Africa.
Mostly good camps that can take care of transportation and itinerary planning for me. And what time of the year to go. I think the rainy-dry seasons differ compared to Kenya/Tazania.
Primus wrote:
This thread seems to have become the de-facto wildlife safari destination .
My question is not about Africa, but hoping I will get some answers here. We are planning a trip to Sri Lanka in November this year for general tourism and I was wondering if adding a few days at the Yala National Park is a good idea. There does not seem to be much information anywhere except places like Tripadvisor.
Anybody been there? Any thoughts, tips? TIA
Sri Lanka is a wonderful place and I spent a month roaming around and I did visit Yala. It's a nice park but I was disappointed by various guides rushing from one place to the other based on radio calls from other guides. Personally I would skip it as there's so much more to see and do.
berimbolo wrote:
Mostly good camps that can take care of transportation and itinerary planning for me. And what time of the year to go. I think the rainy-dry seasons differ compared to Kenya/Tazania.
I can highly recommend Kaingo Camp, run by Shenton Safaris. Great camp, awesome location. My guide there was Patrick and is probably the best guide I've ever had. I went in late October. It was very dry and very hot, but this meant better wildlife sightings.
VKM2F wrote:
I can highly recommend Kaingo Camp, run by Shenton Safaris. Great camp, awesome location. My guide there was Patrick and is probably the best guide I've ever had. I went in late October. It was very dry and very hot, but this meant better wildlife sightings.
What's very hot? Tin Man Lee said it got to ~50C in Mana Pools. That seems rough
VKM2F wrote:
I can highly recommend Kaingo Camp, run by Shenton Safaris. Great camp, awesome location. My guide there was Patrick and is probably the best guide I've ever had. I went in late October. It was very dry and very hot, but this meant better wildlife sightings.
Love this: Patrick was my guide many years ago. Kaingo, Tafika both family run with long roots in the valley. October is referred to as suicide month and unless you really tolerate heat I would not go then. I prefer it cool at night and warm during the day. That means late May to early-mid July.
berimbolo wrote:
What's very hot? Tin Man Lee said it got to ~50C in Mana Pools. That seems rough
Not 50C, but I'm sure we saw 40C most days. There's no AC at Kaingo but the chalets were actually reasonably cool and a good respite from the midday heat. I also spent some time at Mfuwe Lodge. It's a big, busy lodge so a very different feel but the rooms had AC which I very much enjoyed!
Mana Pools in October was worse for me, I'm sure I experienced some heat exhaustion there. That said, I was staying in a pretty basic tented camp with no way to escape the heat during the day.
anotherhobby wrote:
Thank you as well for these great tips! I tried to google that vest and it said it was not available anymore (?) . Need to look into it further.
I found mine at a local Mom and Pop camera store, he just had a couple hanging in the back, was brand new. This was many years ago, so don't know what the situation is like now.
Sharona wrote:
Love this: Patrick was my guide many years ago. Kaingo, Tafika both family run with long roots in the valley. October is referred to as suicide month and unless you really tolerate heat I would not go then. I prefer it cool at night and warm during the day. That means late May to early-mid July.
I am seriously considering Zambia for 2025, especially South Luangwa. From what I've read, Kaingo indeed seems like a good place, they had a BBC crew staying there for some time. The hide photography is said to be very good too. I am not a big fan of that but the field sightings are not that crowded, so it feels more like a conservancy in Kenya, or so I believe (been spoilt now by Kicheche).
If I only had to go to South Luangwa, how many days and at what camp? If just one camp, is there a discount for longer stays? Is ten days at one place too much? In the end I am looking at the best possible sighting and photography, time of the year does not matter so much (would like to avoid extreme heat if I can though).
