OK...this is what you'd call challenging! I wanted to try the night safari, for the occasional different animals and the atmosphere at night - but of course photography isn't easy at night from a moving truck and with moving animals. I was debating between a fast F1.8 lens but way too short focal length, or go with longer lens reach for wildlife but be stuck with F4.5 or higher max aperture...Those with full frame cameras and F2.8 300mm+ lenses would be in the best shape here - I decided to go with focal length and slow apertures and just crank the ISO up to 25,600 and 51,200...and accept the noise. It was fun - and the grainy shots were still fun to capture as you don't often get to shoot animals on a night safari. Though some shots look a bit daylight-ish, it's because I've got the ISO up so high - it was pretty dark, at the very tail end of dusk and beginning of blue hour: Lots of hippos were out and lining the banks (ISO 51,200): The cattle and kudu grazing in the slightly cooler and less oppressive Florida evening air (ISO 25,600): This little grazer was pretty close - I actually could have used the 35mm F1.8 with him, had I brought it (ISO 25,600): A bunch of happily grazing wildebeest and a few tommies mixed in (ISO 25,600): We pulled up behind this giraffe who was looking off into the distance - the sky here was very dark, but the high ISO brought out the clouds (ISO 25,600): In a few spots, they provide some artificial lighting - it's more distant to the animals, rather than right on them, so it is very faint and non-intrusive, but will help guests still be able to see the animals even when it's very dark. You can see some distant light catching on this elephant's back as he walked away with a dinner of grass (ISO 25,600):
We have a FP for it around 9pm in a few weeks. Curious to see how it will turn out. Photograment could be difficult.
I think the next time I do it, I may try going with faster aperture and shorter reach - I think at least some of the animals I was finding were easy at 70mm and some even too close - so though a shorter focal may mean missing on some more distant ones, gaining as much as 3 stops in aperture will make a big difference. Note that at F4.5, I was at ISO25,600 and still only eeking out shutter speeds of 1/50 or so! I think a full frame sensor and a 70-200mm F2.8 lens would be the best bet overall in decent aperture and focal length combined, with ISO of 25,600 or higher needed for much of it. Amazingly despite the A6300 supposedly not having great low light focus ratings, I was scoring AF on the animals in near-dark conditions, no problem, even with a slowish lens. And to think it's even possible to use ISO51,200 on an APS-C camera is pretty incredible, when you look back just 3-5 years ago where the technology has come since then!
Let's see what the 1Dx can do. Is there any artificial light along the trail? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
In some places - yes. It's fairly low power so as not to bother the animals. The savannah area is lit mostly by a fake 'African sunset' behind the trees - it's pretty cheesy, but provides some distant light that in places needs to throw more than 200 feet - so that's a darker spot - you can see on some of the animals how there are shadows casting and a yellowish light - that's from the artificial sunset. Not much in the initial forest regions or by the hippos - that was pretty dark. The elephants have some lights not too far from them - I think you can see in my shot of the elephant how there's a cast of light on his back and the rocks behind - that's from a light probably 50 feet away or so. The lions and cheetahs had very little light at all - mostly just moonlight and truck headlights.
