Uganda wedding/travel preparations

[Egger]

Hi Everybody,

I'm going on a trip to Uganda next week and obviously want to make as much good pictures as possible . We are going to attend a wedding between a Belgian girl and a guy from Uganda who studied in Belgium, and afterwards we are going to visit the country, including visits to wildparks etc.

My current gear is the following:

Canon D450
18-55 IS kitlens
55-250 IS kitlens
50 mm 1.4 prime lens
On-flash camera diffusor thingy
2 GB SD card

How worried should I be about changing lenses and dust? I havn't had any problems with it so far but I can imaggine it a little more dusty overthere than in rainy Belgium...

Will the 55-250 mm lens be good enough to make pictures of animals from a driving jeep shortly after sunrise (f/5.6@250 mm )

I think an extra memory card could be usefull.The trip lasts a big two weeks and I usually shoot in RAW to be able to correct my mistakes as far as possible. How much would I need, and shoudn't I shoot JPEG instead to save some memory space?

Any other gear I absolutely need? Or any important tips to share?

Many thanks,

Bram

[Jim Bryant]

Don't shoot jpeg unless you have too...........go out and purchase some more CF or SD cards. You can never have enough cards for a two week shoot.

[oldwolf]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

Don't shoot jpeg unless you have too...........go out and purchase some more CF or SD cards. You can never have enough cards for a two week shoot.

What Jim said. You can also change your lens in your camera back to cut down on the dust.

[mainak_ch]

Originally Posted by Egger

Any other gear I absolutely need? Or any important tips to share?

Apart from high capacity SDHC cards, you may need a tripod. The 55-250 lens will be 400mm in the tele end in your camera, and the reach should be adequate for the larger mammals. You may find help on african safari from this website; they also have a free ebook on wildlife safari in Africa.

[constructivecriticism]

I'm envious of your trip to Uganda. A handful of friends just returned from a conference in Kampala, and they simply loved it. Not to mention the incredible pictures they returned with.

I would HIGHLY recommend you get bigger memory cards. I highly recommend the quarterly tiered rebate SanDisk offers on their Extreme III/IV memory cards. Depending on the length of your stay there, I'd say buy an modest 8GB for now, but keep an eye out for those.

I could see a tripod being of use, as well. Also consider a wireless remote, if one is at hand.

Enjoy your trip, and forward our congratulations to the soon-to-be wed couple!

[constructivecriticism]

Originally Posted by constructivecriticism

I highly recommend the quarterly tiered rebate SanDisk offers on their Extreme III/IV memory cards.

Well, and here it comes! This is a great deal, I highly recommend it to everyone. I've bought 9 different CF cards from them, got all the rebates (VISA gift cards), and made profit by selling them to my friends at a GREAT discount - win win.

Not sure what the policy is about linking to retail sites, yet here goes: $9 per 8GB SDHC Extreme III card when buy 3 at Beach Camera. Get expedited shipping and you'll still get a great bargain.

Best of luck.

[Palladius]

I was in Uganda a while ago (bloody hell eight years!) and it wasn't amazingly dusty... the dust was more sort of insidious than anything else. Your pack wouldn't fill up with sand and dust as soon as you opened it, but you would find dust and grit getting into strange places after a while. It's very fine and will get into your clothes and hair if you're not washing regularly... if you're not camping though, I can't imagine it would be more of a problem than anywhere else.

Except for cities and large towns, its actually a very lush and verdant country from what I remember... you should get fabulous photos. Very jealous.