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Olympus E-510 and E-410 On Safari

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if you read his wish list the 12-60 would seem to head the list for both range and faster AF.............but the E3 would have sorted his missed shot even better.
 
very nicely put together Phil - I like the mixture of images and text/context.

clearly we would all love the 90-250 and 300/2.8 to be a lot cheaper but I agree with your sentiment (as others have said as well) that there is room for a high quality longer zoom or prime at about F3.5/4 and 2000$ at the length you wish.

how did you feel overall about the 410 / 510? I have to admit that my 400 doesn't get a look in v the 510 and will depart soon - I love the size and ergonomics but at the end of the day the 510 is small enough and delivers...

thanks again for posting - glad you didn't miss the kingfisher entirely!
 
Cool photos! Something like that trip is on my list of things to do. Before I die. :-)
pnprice said:
I could have (and would have) used a a one-button switch to toggle AF on and off.
Click to expand...
You can set E-510 to manual focusing mode and assign either Fn or AEL button (don't remember at the moment) to auto focus. So basically you have manual focusing with one-touch AF. That would have certainly helped. A longer lens with its focusing range limiter would have helped a bit, too.

On the second thought, you can also set E-510 to S-AF + MF. That is, to auto focus with manual override on half-pressed shutter. Or that was too much hustle in those conditions?
 
Looks like a great trip. Very nice shots and a wonderful experience, no doubt.

Try croping the giraffe's butt right out and match the reflection in the water. That may do the trick.

Thanks again.
--
Cheers,
Snowbird_UT
 
Very nice, both the excellent pictures and the write up. From both your comments on price difference between Kenya and Botswana, and from our instant love of Kenya, I guess we will stick to Kenya next time, but Botswana and your photographs does look inspiring. Having done Safari once, we are hooked.

Very interesting comments, we are beginners and I never really took the time we needed to learn the art or the camera, you are clearly more advanced (both from your comments and photographs), but we share many of your views. Still, we managed to click about 3000 times, and if we ever have the time (or the eye) to process them I'm sure we will find some keepers.

We put a number some of our "clinking" online at http://picasaweb.google.com/Mr.Middie.Dog (named after our dog who stayed at home)

But we have not used any time to really choose which ones to post, there are just too many to even process in jpg.

Again,
Many thanks for your web site. Safari is awesome.
 
I probably would have bought the E-3 if it had been available at the time (although the high price might have deterred me). It would indeed address some of my issues: (1) it comes with a 1.15x viewfinder magnification (and thus would have saved me the need to buy a 1.2x magnifier myself), (2) its status display runs along the bottom as I prefer, rather than the right side, (3) it supposedly provides faster autofocus, and (4) it provides two control dials.

The E-3 looks like a great camera. For now, I will stick with my 510 and 410 --- if I'm going to be spending thousands of dollars on any new camera gear in the next few years, it will be a longer lens --- but for people who are contemplating buying a 510 and are interested in wildlife photography, I suggest taking a good look at spending an extra $800 and getting the E-3 instead, it might well be worth it to you.
 
photo_owl said:
very nicely put together Phil - I like the mixture of images and
text/context.
Click to expand...
For the record, I used Apple's iWeb software to make those pages. As with many Apple consumer-level software products, iWeb makes it very easy to do things if you are willing to give up quite a bit of control.
photo_owl said:
how did you feel overall about the 410 / 510? I have to admit that
my 400 doesn't get a look in v the 510 and will depart soon - I love
the size and ergonomics but at the end of the day the 510 is small
enough and delivers...
Click to expand...
If I had it to do over again, I would have gotten two 510's and not gotten the 410. As you say, the 510 is small enough, and the advantage of image stabilization is pretty big. And of course, even though the 410's body is small, you still have to put a lens on it; the combination of 410+lens+hood is not that much smaller than 510+lens+hood. The 410 is a fine camera but unless a small amount of size is a really big deal, I recommend the 510 instead.
photo_owl said:
thanks again for posting - glad you didn't miss the kingfisher entirely!
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Yeah, me too. They are amazingly colorful little birds.
 
vlatko said:
vlatko said:
I could have (and would have) used a a one-button switch to toggle AF on and off.
Click to expand...
You can set E-510 to manual focusing mode and assign either Fn or AEL
button (don't remember at the moment) to auto focus. So basically you
have manual focusing with one-touch AF. That would have certainly
helped. A longer lens with its focusing range limiter would have
helped a bit, too.

On the second thought, you can also set E-510 to S-AF + MF. That is,
to auto focus with manual override on half-pressed shutter. Or that
was too much hustle in those conditions?
Click to expand...
Thanks for posting this, because it allows me to go into more detail. I had started to give more explanation on my website, but decided it was getting too wordy.

I did try manual focus, and setting the function button to provide one-touch AF, and liked it OK...but for 95% of the shots AF was better, and I got tired of hitting the function button all the time. Plus, as discussed below, I decided I needed the function button for something else.

I also tried setting the function button so that the camera went into MF when the function button was held down. I liked it well enough that I used it that way for quite a while, and did get a few shots I would otherwise have missed.

But ultimately it was more useful for me to set the function button to turn on auto-bracketing, so that's the way I used it most of the time. For, say, a troupe of baboons moving between shade and sunlight, I just really couldn't tell what the best exposure would be, and I wanted to be able to bracket really quickly. But for most shots I wanted to pick the right exposure and leave it. So I eventually settled on using the Fn button to switch on bracketing.

The problem with half-press for AF, with manual override, is that you can't use the manual focus until the AF has focused on something . As with the small-subject-among-moving-grasses photo that I mentioned on my site, the AF hunted the whole time the bird was sitting there. In principle I could have quickly focused on some distant object so that the AF would stop hunting, then recomposed and focused manually...but this wouldn't have worked in practice. For one thing, once I had moved the camera away from my subject, it would take a second just to get him back in the frame again.

All in all, just an AF/MF switch --- preferably one that I could control with my left hand --- seems like the best solution to me. (I'd prefer if it were on the left hand because the right hand already has so much to do).
 
The Botswana government issues "concessions" to operate lodges in the areas of the country with the best wildlife viewing. The concessionaires bid --- maybe once every ten years? Not sure --- to operate a given concession. Part of the bid includes how much the lodge will pay the government for each visitor. Of course the lodges in the best areas can charge their customers more money, so they are able to pay the government more money (and of course they have to, or someone will outbid them). I think this is a great system, by the way, because it means the government is getting a lot of value out of preserving and enhancing their wildlife and has a big incentive to manage it well. But it does mean that to some extent you get what you pay for.

The lodges also have systems to make sure the local people benefit, too. At some or all of them, the entire lodge staff must be hired from the local village (with the exception of a few explictly indicated positions such as manager, vehicle mechanics, and the head chef).

Finally, to answer your question (sorta): at the top lodges, the daily cost is over $500 PER PERSON, assuming double-occupany...so over a thousand bucks a night for a couple. All of the lodges provide lots of excellent food, and the cost includes guided game drives (twice a day). All of the lodges sell a few locally-made souvenirs, but nothing else: if you need sunscreen or sunglasses or something, you're probably out of luck.

At lodges in less wildlife-dense areas (or that have lesser accommodations, but still perfectly fine) it can be less than half that.

Most of these places are inaccessible by road --- travel between them is by small plane --- so that costs money too.

You can also find a variety of package tours, such as 7-night trips that stay at some of these concession lodges and at some areas outside the concessions (such as national park campgrounds) that are somewhat cheaper; some of these can be very nice trips, and can be much cheaper, perhaps $150 per person per day or maybe even less.

My wife and I stayed at 5 different lodges, each one representing a different ecotype: one was surrounded by water and papyrus marsh, one was in a very dry area at the edge of the Makgadikgadi salt pans, one was dry mopane forest, and two were different types of savanna. Going to so many places meant we had several small-plane flights and increased our costs; we could have stayed for more days at fewer places and saved some money.

True to the principles of the first paragraph of this post, we saw the most and greatest stuff (including lions hunting and killing at night) at the most expensive place, but even the less expensive places were fantastic. And all of the lodges are uncrowded: most of the time, your vehicle is the only one in sight. And all of the guides are excellent.

So: for a relatively low-cost Botswana lodge trip, plan on at least $500 per day, per couple (including air travel between lodges, but not international airfare). $750 per day would be more typical, I think.

At the high end, a couple could certainly spend over $1500 per day.
 
Oakvillain said:
thanks for the info. Was this your first safari?
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This is the first time we did an expensive, lodge-to-lodge trip. But in 1999 my wife and I joined 8 of our friends (including two who were living in Botswana at the time) driving between national park campsites in rented four-wheel-drive vehicles. We saw lots of great stuff, absolutely loved the experience, and vowed to go back someday. It took eight years for "someday" to finally come around: it ain't cheap! (Even driving between national parks wasn't really cheap, since 4WD rental was expensive).

We considered and rejected the idea of renting our own 4WD and driving and camping again. Without friends in a second vehicle, we could have trouble if our vehicle gave out (as one of them did on our previous trip). Plus, you spend a lot of time driving between places, and a lot less time searching for wildlife. And organizing the camping would have been a lot harder since our gear-stocked friends aren't in the country anymore.

We thought about going someplace cheaper in Africa, but decided that the Botswana model is really worth supporting: by restricting the number of people who can visit, they help reduce the impacts on the wildlife and on their other scarce resources (such as water). Also, the local people benefit from it, and all of the lodge staffers we spoke with were all very pleased with the current system. From what we've heard about safaris in Kenya and Tanzania, Botswana's are more our style. That said, those other countries have incredible wildlife and someone seeking a more affordable experience can have a fantastic trip there (or to several other countries).
 
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