Preparations for Africa

I have started the preparations for Africa doing a stupid thing.

Well I have invested in new equipment and replaced one camera, one tele converter and one lens.

Is that really stupid you say? Well yes it is if you are in the middle of the preparations for a trip back to Mana Pools National Park. By stupid I mean that you really don’t want to get to know new equipment just a couple of weeks prior to a trip. You want at least two months to really get familiar with the new equipment so you know the do’s and don’ts before you touch down in Africa. That is my experience at least.

On the positive side is that I have less burden to bear and the equipment is more or less familiar to me as I just have replaced old gear with new so I don’t have to learn how to handle everything from scratch. The negative side is that I now need to fine-tune everything again and that takes time.

So this weekend I have field tested the equipment for the first time. On Saturday I went out to Stora Amundön and tried the Auto Focus on the new Nikon D810 and I must say that it worked much better than the old Nikon D800. The D800 often missed the first shot in a sequence and the feel with the D810 was that it also nailed the first shot nicely. I hadn’t expected anything else as it is a new and improved Auto Focus motor in the D810.

On Sunday I went to Borås Zoo to do more mammal photography. It is a big difference taking pictures of birds and mammals. I find it harder to get really good mammal photos and I feel I need to spend more time honing my skills on bigger animals than birds.

Brown Bear cubs fighting preparations — Brown Bear cubs fighting 150906

I had the fortune to get a couple of nice photos from the trip and I must say that I like the photo of the Brown Bear cubs play fighting. It is a nice action photo and probably one of the more interesting I have taken of Brown Bears. I find Brown Bears to be hard to take photos off. They have massive bodies and small eyes making them impossible to photo as I most often want eye contact in my photos. I don’t feel a need with eye contact in this one as it is a pure action photo.

Next week I will continue with the preparations and I hope to be able to do the Auto Focus fine-tuning then so I have one more weekend to try the setup and see that it works before heading southwards for warmer weather.

Please enjoy my photos from the weekend.