SaharaSafaris.org

Safaris photography is an enjoyable experience that enables you to explore the place you visit and express your observation to the world. It may range but is not limited to the following categories of photography; Nature, Landscape, Portrait, Journalism, Sports, however, like any other activity it has its challenges that may turn this lovely experience into a nightmare if the photography equipment are not well handled.

Challenging Situation

Desert Safaris Photography

Dust is always the big problem and there here comes the struggle to keep the inside of the camera clean, specially if you aim shooting different types of photography and may need to change the lens you use to be able to cover your objectives.

Desert Night Photography

See below "Photographing a Meteor Shower".

Water Sport and Diving

<to be added by members>

Hiking and Mountaineering

<to be added by members>

Rain

Use rain coats

Humid Weather

the trick is not to have water droplets condense 'inside' the lens or body.

Heat

<to be added by members>

Cold/Snow

<to be added by members>

Remote Power (electrical) facilities

very common problem. Carry additional batteries (charged) in your bag.   Evaluate how many of those are needed depeneding on the mission ahead and how demanding it is in batteries

Using rechargers in cars may be useful in 4x4 safaris. Radio Shack has some of those chargers for many types of camera that work either on home electricity or car cigarette lighter source.

Tools / Accessories

1. A cloth bag that you can use to change the lens inside it to avoid dust. Specification:
   § It should be big enough to fit the camera, the other lens and your hand inside it and close tight on them while changing the lens.
   § It is similar to the cloth bag that you get when you buy leather shoes and bags, you can ask a sewer to make it for you or sew it yourself.
2. UV filter is important for lens protection and to keep it safe from scratches.
3. Polarizer filter is a must have filter for Nature and landscape photographers. (Benefits?)
4. Camera ARMOR, (Benefits?), please check: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_1_9?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-ke...
5. For perfect sealing, maybe you should think of underwater housing, please check:
   http://www.amazon.com/Ikelite-Underwater-Housing-E-TTL-2-Digital/dp/B000...
   http://www.amazon.com/Ewa-Marine-Underwater-Housing-EOS-400D-EOS-450D/dp...

How to Plan for Your Safaris Photography:

Before the trip

Make sure you have the following:

• The widest range of focal length, that helps you cover all possible types of photography.
• A camera bag that is closed with zippers and not only buckles.
• A cloth bag that you can use to change the lens inside it to avoid dust.
• UV / Polarized filters and make sure they fit on all your lenses.

During the trip

Make sure you do the following:

• Make sure that the camera bag is closed with zippers.
• Clean-up the dust on the camera body from outside before changing the lens.
• Don’t change the lens outside if it’s windy.
• If you have to change the lens, use the cloth bag to do it and make sure the camera body is facing downward to avoid dust falling onto the sensor.
• ALWAYS cover the lens with the plastic cover comes with it.
• Get sure that the plastic cover is attached to the camera body.
• Procedure for changing battery, memory card???
• Handling other equipment related to photography (i.e. laptop, other storing device)???

After returning home

Make sure you do the following:

• Clean the dust on the camera body from outside, to avoid it falling inside the camera when you change the lens for next usage.

Special Missions

Photographing a Meteor Shower

Meteor showers photography needs to: (1) know where to aim the camera with a wide angle lens to capture all in high resolution, and (2) to avoid stars becoming too strong a noise by leaving a curve of their trail.

• One method is to try not to exceed the time of opening shutter than 30 seconds (near Polaris) to leave the stars as almost dots and reduce their appearance. This however, may be still too much time for the constellations at Ecliptic (Zodiac constellations) who moves faster in the night sky of Egypt.
• the results will be also sensitive to ISO number. If you don't are for the noise (or it has minimal impact in your experience) then you may need to increase it so that the meteor line may stand clearer than with lower ISO

All astro-photography takes extended times to photography so use of a tripod is mandatory.

SLR Camera Maintenance

As expected the type of maintenance for Cameras mostly used in deserts or dry-landscape countries are different from others. Cleaning lenses off dust particles, broken cogs, shutter's problems, etc.

Contacts

Mohi: +20(0)2-24557766

Bibawy : +20(0)12-1858082

Canon Error 99

One maybe astonished when faced with a malfunction on one's Canon EOS. the camera is not responding to trigger and instead of shooting a frame, a flashing message pop-up on LCD indicating “ERROR99”. Some start by questioning the battery, CF card and lens mount, but it may prove to be worse.

This error correspond to a failure in communication between the camera body-processor and camera circuit. It might be anything that interferes with the camera cycle which is (mount-trigger-shutter and recording): an unclean sensor for instance, dirty mounting triggers,shorting in power circuit, bad input/output CF card or, which turned to be my case: bad shutter mechanism.

Because of depreciation, one may lose the pushing gear of the shutter and that will interfere with the cycle and will result back in the error. Normally a shutter can be fixed, according to lots of online-reviews, but since it’s the most moving element within the body, one usually get a recurrence of error in case of fixing. You may wish to replace the camera body!

Replacing the shutter at the official agency with a new one costs around 900 LE plus more than 30 days of waiting which is beyond many people's budget in Egypt. So one may start an effortful journey to find a trustworthy practitionr. And here’s a sum of what could be found:

At Zietoun district in Cairo, “Mohi” is Old enough to be an experienced technician, with a workshop that is full of dead cameras to extract relevant spare parts from. His charge is not cheap enough for me many but is a bit less than the Canon dealer but he is quite honest. "Canon does not invest good technologies /raw materials in building the Rebel series(the x00)’s" he states. "I can fix you this one but if you want a reliant body you should aim the 40D or higher" Mohi concluded to Shady Khair elDin on early 2010.

According to Moh, the availability of Nikon bodies is quite high, nationally speaking, compared with Canon. This however impacts the availability of spare parts to match the demand and accordingly lower maintenance cost/time for Nikon users. Canon or Nikon, the DSLR camera bodies and lenses are very sensitive objects, there’s countless number of parts within. "In 8 out of every 10 cases, once you have it maintained, it become no longer reliable" mohi eventually exclaimed.

Another practitonr is “bibawy” who resides at the same district and few blocks from “mohi” cheap and on duty till late hours but very unpunctual and shows lots of carelessness about time. You can have your stuff fixed at his workshop with moderate cost, but you can also spend a whole day trying to contact him before pickup time with no answer! Still cheaper and by bargaining one may reach 300 LE only for fixing a small part on the shutter. For him too, Nikon is easier and cheaper.

City-wide, there are tons of photography dealers who offer the service of maintaining DSLR camera’s and lenses but they eventually outsource it to one of those two. And for pickup and delivery business, they charge you for double the cost.

From wide experienc e of scanning the workshops and photography dealers in Cairo during early 2010, “Mohi’s” note about the reliability of rebel series and the Nikon vs. Canon maintaining seems to be true.

This post started by Shady Kheir elDin's question on the SSC Forum (yahoogroup's SaharaSafaris) and the results are compiled to begin this section by Shady. May el-Eoni has contributed among others.