EM-1 Goes on Safari (17 pics)

...and luckily my wife and I got to go along with it 

We went to South Africa late October/Early November and had the opportunity to spend a few days on safari at a private reserve next to Kruger Park.  I had upgraded my G3 (which my wife ended up using) to an EM-1 only days before leaving and I am very pleased with the camera.  Didn't take me long to set up all the controls to the point where I was as quick or quicker with it than my G3 I'd had for over 2 years.  Also, the IBIS is brilliant.  I found it worked markedly better than the OIS on my 100-300mm lens (I know that is opposite the normal trend for that focal range, but I found it to be true in my case).  Anyway, here are a few shots.  Some are RAW processed in LR5.3 but most are just JPEGs I quickly touched up in Snapseed on my tablet while we were still in Africa.  While I took a few (very few) pics with other lenses, all of these were with the 100-300.  Hope you enjoy them!

Notice the red-billed oxpecker on his back

Gnu (wildebeest)

Female kudu

African fish-eagle

Puffback shrike

Nyala bull

Red hornbill

Magnificent kudu bull

Twins?

Waterbuck bull

Crested barbet

Lilac breasted roller

Wahlberg's eagle

Another shot of that awesome kudu bull

And for the people who were recently asking about what lenses to take on safari, take the longest focal length you can get your hands on!!  I would say 95% of my pictures were taken with the 100-300mm, mostly toward the upper limit of the zoom.

Wonderful series of photos.  I enjoyed all of them.  Looks like you has a grear time.

Very nice. The bokeh on the Puffback Shrike is especially nice.

Excellent shots.  Wish I were there.  When I went, I had a film camera.  Really want to return with digital.

Great shots! The 100-300 did very well for you, too, as did the camera.

I was puzzled by a couple of the shots at ISO 3200 and 1600 with pretty slow shutter speeds, which I took to be toward the end of the day in low light. Looked at the times and concluded your camera was not set on local time

Virhua wrote:

Beautiful shots! I especially like the one of the elephant and the warthog. It really shows how large elephants are. Which game reserve did you visit?

Virginia

Thanks for the feedback! The reserve we went to is called Grietjie Private Nature Reserve, and is part of the larger Balule PNR, which borders Kruger.

PC Wheeler wrote:

Great shots! The 100-300 did very well for you, too, as did the camera.

I was puzzled by a couple of the shots at ISO 3200 and 1600 with pretty slow shutter speeds, which I took to be toward the end of the day in low light. Looked at the times and concluded your camera was not set on local time

Thanks, glad you enjoyed them! Yes, the clock in the camera would have been U.S. Eastern time, so it was off 6-7 hours (time changed in the U.S. during our trip).  Some of those shots at higher ISO were in rapidly fading light during our evening game drive. Maybe because South Africa doesn't do daylight savings time, but it was bright very early in the morning and getting pretty dark by 5:30pm.

Also I realized a lot of the pics have no EXIF data. Those are the JPEGs I posted to my Google+ account and apparently linking from a URL strips the EXIF data. All the pictures I uploaded from Lightroom retained EXIF.

Thank you for sharing - makes me want to go back!  I especially liked the shots of the kudu female and waterbuck bull.

Wow!

I have been pondering whether to take DSLR or M43 on an African Safari which is top of my bucket list. Your pictures enlightened me.

Some said Africa=Action=DSLR. Others said M43 works well.

To go DSLR, I need to upgrade my gear for longer reach. I use D7000 + 70-300mm. Can be two steps, trade up to D7100 and make use of the 1.3X crop in camera, and get Nikon 80-400, or the coming soon Tamron 150-600.

For M43, I can mount the 100-300 on either OMD EM5 or G5 to get me 600mm equivalent.

still another option, or likely a second camera will be a Canon superzoom that gives me 840mm reach, but much much smaller sensor.

You demonstrated the capabilities of M43 and the 100-300mm.

Did you get any shots of wildlife  in action?

May I ask what is your lens on your second camera for landscape and snapshots.

Thank you.

Great pictures and thanks for sharing! I'm sure it must have been much more exciting to see those incredible animals in real life.

I think the IBIS is one of the greatest features in the EM1, pictures are incredibly sharp even with a very long lens.

Thanks for the nice comments. I used the E-M1 with the 100-300 probably 95% of the time, while my wife used a G3 with the 14-140. She is not into photography so she just went with iAuto. I also carried the 7-14 and 20 f1.7 in my backpack but used them very sparingly.

In terms of action shots there are very few. The area we were in was scrub land not open savannah so if the animals were running it was usually behind tons of brush, branches, etc. Actually it made even stationary shots difficult most of the time. I would think you'd have trouble with any camera system in that environment trying to get action shots.

Thanks.

I just went for a birding tour this week, using my G5 with 100-300. Some are sharp some are not, even with stationery ones. but I did capture a heron in flight. Will try again next time with OM-D EM5 and see if it is better.

Guess if I can shoot birds, I should be able to handle bigger wildlife in Africa!

All shots were S-AF or MF. I did not use C-AF at all.

I guess because you said there were not much action to shoot so you did not need AFC

I will soon face this dilemma: D7100 and EM5 two systems or M43 all the way.

Hope someone with East Safari experience can throw some light on this.