Africa Wild

Good advice here.

smithsonian wrote:
Agree with Peter - try and keep away from the digital zoom - rather shoot with optical zoom only and crop later if you need to or keep the image as a landscape.

That's what I always do with my bridge camera, only I have to get one with more optical zoom I do not use it enough to justify the expense of a DSLR.

Got the canon powershot sx60 in the end. Was very happy with it, only issue being with some shots on night drives. Obviously need to buy a separate flash, oh well will get that for the next trip.

That's the one I want to buy, but if it does not have a flash........ Strange, because the x30 did have a flash

Either way photography on a night drive is not the easiest of things. Personally I don't use a flash as I'm not keen on disrupting nocturnal eyes...

PJL wrote:Either way photography on a night drive is not the easiest of things. Personally I don't use a flash as I'm not keen on disrupting nocturnal eyes...

better to have a lot of ISO and stop moving... in the truck

Is a flash a lot worse than a spotlight?

That's a good question RP. Camera flashes use white light and if you are taking a photo at any kind of distance will illuminate to their brightest possible to provide light on your subject. Whilst the light doesn't last long it is concentrated, so depending on the flash can be as much as 500,000 lumens. Spotlights tend to be more in the 500 to 1000 lumens range.

Ideally we wouldn't use either option, but practically there's always that desire to see and photograph nocturnal animals. A spotlight with a red filter is probably the best option - it still provides light, but many nocturnal animals don't see red and as such aren't affected by it.

I use torch, but on a part of the body, never, never in the face