1DX Does Africa Soon

As an owner of a 1DX for a short time now, I wanted to get the thoughts of other owners who have had their cameras in an environment that have stationary and accelerating wildlife.

One of the articles I found interesting is this one on how he suggests you set up your 1DX. Your thoughts on this article would be appreciative.

http://www.johanfoto.c​om …os-1dx-wildlife-settings/

I would also like to know what settings you found to be most effective for these types of conditions in Africa. As a note I will more than likely be using a 100-400 with a 1.4 ex. from within a safari vehicle and bean bag.

Cheers

Hello I am a owner of a 1dx but I never been to Africa before, but I did have trouble shooting when it was a lot of humidity, the problem I was getting was the 1DX would think I have a flash on it, when you using meter mode, and I would see both bars in the viewer. I had to kept turning the camera off and then on again.

Do you have the latest firmware installed, I have never heard of the humid issue?

Well, not sure where in Africa you are going but I will share what I learned in Serengeti and Masai Mara with my 5D III last year.

You need two bodies. Things change very fast and there is nothing like being a able to grab one with something wider and the other telephoto. I had my 5DIII with 300 f/2.8 (mostly with 1.4 extender) and my 5D with 70-200. Also brought my 24-105 which saw a surprising amount of use- you will find the animals can be quite close!

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be "cloudy days" there, so you end up with a couple hours in the morning and one hour in the evening of really spectacular light. The rest of the day is very bright overhead lighting which is a challenge. This of course means you want fast glass. Do you have a 70-200 f/2.8 you could bring? I would worry that the 100-400 with extender is going to be a real challenge mornings and evenings.

Beautiful place, you will end up with thousands of great shots I'm sure and spend years working on them like me. Enjoy!

I do have a 70-200 2.8 but space in the bag is a premium, I have another 5d with 24-105 and a 17-40 plus the 100-400 so its either the 100-400 or the 70-200

I am going to the seregetti

I have to take a small plane out so its one lens or the other either the 70-200 or 100-400

picworx wrote in post #16259340
I do have a 70-200 2.8 but space in the bag is a premium, I have another 5d with 24-105 and a 17-40 plus the 100-400 so its either the 100-400 or the 70-200

I am going to the seregetti

I have to take a small plane out so its one lens or the other either the 70-200 or 100-400

Yeah, I did the small plane thing a number of times there too. I was worried since I had a good 35lbs of camera gear alone! Turned out to not be a big deal. They only weighed our stuff on one flight and then it was all bags on one scale so between my kids and wife there was plenty of extra weight available. Next time I will bring more gear, as I got the impression that in Africa you could pretty much slip someone a few bucks and it would be fine. Also, anything you "carried on" was not included in the weight limit FWIW, and when I asked someone they said that "cameras are not included in the limit". Not a lot of hard/fast rules in Africa haha!

Bring the 70-200, you won't be sorry. A lot of my favorite images were shot with that. The separation you get with 2.8 makes the animals really pop. Interestingly, most of the images I ended up printing were either shot with the 70-200 at 2.8 or the 300 at 2.8.

So did you shoot the 70-200 with the 1.4X most of the time?

I understand you must remain on the roads so this combo may not give the length you need?

picworx wrote in post #16259258
Do you have the latest firmware installed, I have never heard of the humid issue?

OH yeah..

Was it just rainy or were you in the rain forest of the Amazon?

You should call Canon if the problem is still there.

By the way getting back to my original post about settings, any insights on this?

picworx wrote in post #16259554
So did you shoot the 70-200 with the 1.4X most of the time?

I understand you must remain on the roads so this combo may not give the length you need?

No, the 70-200 was shot without extender. You will be surprised how close some of the animals come to you. We had a really good guide that knew the animals behaviors and he would set us on a spot and a lion way in the distance would slowly walk towards us.

This was shot on the 5DIII at 130mm f/4