In search of a Light weight bag pack for a safari

infrequenttraveller wrote:

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• Do you need all the gear you mentioned? Or could you accept a gap between the 12-40 you will definitely need and the 100-400 you will definitely need? That could save you 880 grams for the 40-150.

• 2 bodies is a given, 3 might be too much, given the weight limit. So I'd limit it to 2 bodies. ...

This is the sort of issue that depends so much on exactly where one's going and at what time of year (although I'd say 2 bodies was plenty anywhere - otherwise I think the 'unproductive' weight is too high, and I'd get confused!). How close is the usual shrub/tree cover and how much of it is there? Can you drive off road to follow sightings, or may a lot be at long range? Unfortunately this is the sort of thing that only becomes clear at the end of a trip!

On our recent Botswana/SA trip I was fine normally with the 40-150 on one body and the 300 on the other, with the tc1.4 on one or the other on some days during the brightest times, especially when there was a lot of birdlife around. I had the 12-100 in my bag, and swapped it for one or the other often at rest stops, and occasionally when a close encounter looked likely.

In 9 days of game drives and boat trips I can recall only one occasion when I wished I'd got the 12-100 on and hadn't (a bull elephant calmly wandered slowly closer and ever closer to our boat in gathering dusk, sniffing us curiously, until he towered above, and I got some nice shots of his right eye with the 40-150!

Only one other photographer in the boat had a wide lens on - a 24-105 on her FF Canon - and she got an enormous shock when she pulled the camera away from here eye and realised how close he was! Of course he just gently wandered away, and we all started breathing again.

We had relatively few encounters at under 40mm distance (on m4/3) and all the other opportunities gave time to switch lenses. Often this was to take 'establishing' shots of the animals in their environment.