Tord
Well-known member
Having had the privilege to experience similar situations (yet other destinations), I have learned to bring two setups.Ron, let me tell you about the two situations where I have really loved having a zoom: Safari in South Africa and a trip to Galapagos. In both cases, you could go from a distant flying bird to something almost too close for 100 mm in a split second. Probably half of my pictures from Galapagos were at less than 200 mm.
Niels
One setup with a short-medium telezoom (like the 50-200 SWD) for mammals and the real close encounters with birds.
One with a fixed focal length super telephoto mainly for bird photography. If I were to select one length only, I would go for ~500mm. On the first trip I brought my TLAPO804 480mm refractor scope, it was close to perfect. Next trip I brought the 300mm/2.8 lens and found myself using it with the EC14 in >80% of the situations. Last trip I brought a SW80ED 600mm refractor scope and Canon 400mm/5.6. Scope was too much, so I fell back using the Canon 400mm/5,6 in most birding situations.