m8o in Northern Tanzania '07 (serious d/l warning!)

[m8o]

I finally made enough progress in converting RAWs to JPGs to mirror my growing post I'm evolving on Pentaxforums here as well. Because I am 'telling a story' as I post I decided on including it here in the "Journeys" Forum as opposed to Nature & Wildlife. I will post a pointer there to here too tho...

-steve

Now, we begin...

Pictures are beginning to trickle out... A bit under 4000 RAWs. With time for 'life' I figure I'll be doing about 1/4 to 1/2 day's shooting every night. Everything will be found under here in date order.
Tanzania 2007 | m8o | Fotki.com
Finally some things 'memorable' posted to my gallery; there are some pretty nice captures still to come, but no Rhino sadly! :(

In one way starting backwards (because there were so few shots), the last day's shooting at KIA Airport Lodge was pretty 'ok' tho... have a look @ 070820 - Serengeti and Day Room @ Kilimanjaro album | m8o | Fotki.com
(hi-rez orignals can be had there; a lot of noise treatment via Lightroom, hardly touched color/brightness/contrast. )

Photos taken on a cloudy, misty, lightly drizzly day, handheld, wide open, with the Sigma 300mm f/2.8 lens. Most of them at the link above are shot at high ISO (save some of the bird shots @ the beginning until I realized my error trying to use ISO100). First three subjects were near minimum focus limit (ya, close) so focus was razor thin; keep that in mind as only part of the bird is in the DOF zone (either body, or head, not both ;) ). Tiny taste below... all at link above:







DOF was a lot deeper here, but shot was taken at about EV10 or EV11 with the bird at the edge of the tree canopy on the drizzly day.



edit: How did I miss seeing and sharing this pic in the past?!



The third page of the link titled "070820 - Serengeti and Day Room @ Kilimanjaro album | m8o | Fotki.com" contains pics of two of these birds in a little bit of a 'shoving match' fighting over the one apple. The newcomer prevailed. He's also the one that didn't give up eating once he lost his balance and spun upside-down.

[m8o]

Ok, from here on out it's animal picture overload. The volumes of pictures I have to sift through to find 'keepers' and convert is enormous. But the reward is of course what we strive for, memorable well composed [or at least exposed :p ] , pictures!

Once we made our way from the place in Arusha to Tarangire National Park, ate, got settled in our lodge (was supposed to be a tent but we got an upgrade :), our guides took us out at 4pm for some wildlife viewing.

I decided I'd start with using the 1.4x Sigma TC with the 300mm f/2.8. What I didn't realize was I had kept the Polarizing drop-in filter in-place; I had thought I replaced it with the clear UV filter. After having a terrible outing here at work around the pond one day with the 2x TC and filter together, I realized the loss in light is too much to use both TC and pol filter at the same time. More unfortunate is I didn't realize it was in, and didn't make use of it and turn it to bring the best out of it for every lighting angle and condition. ...mark that up to lesson learned... :o By the end of the trip I can honestly say I had some idea of what I was doing. With these pictures? ... not so much!:o Just to say, the results of the days after this and next one or two only get better from here.

There's some pix worthy of sharing still...
All here: 070811(b) - Tarangire National Park album | m8o | Fotki.com

We saw Ostrich here and there:


Many Zebras:


Africa's version of "ham" (lol):


Numerous Birdiez (as time went on, I actually learned how to shoot these with the bright sky behind):


Elephants ... a -lot- of Elephants ... Dang things are too big to fit in frame even with only the 1.4x TC (in two days I went to the 2x) and they got close enough to almost touch even at times. If I wasn't convinced before I was now, I'm angry only Canon Nikon and Sigma get the 120-300mm f/2.8 Zoom from Sigma. :mad: Later, I finally got my guides/drivers to understand closer to the animals was not good for me! Wifie and In-laws shouldn't suffer however, so, that was the dilemma. (I came to learn I needed a photographer's Safari, which Thomson Safaris does do)

Result being, mostly a survey of Elephant body parts...:p (yes, there were some from afar) The majority of "parts shots" remain in my Fotki Albums; I didn't want to bore you with trunks, tusks & ears here...





...continued in next post...

[m8o]

...continuing my Album excerpts from here:
070811(b) - Tarangire National Park album | m8o | Fotki.com

Ok, enough of the Elephants ... well, just two more:



Africa's version of Venison:



Dang those trees the birds sit on, and Elephants and Giraffes (and others) eat are nasty:



A duck survives in Africa?!


Days later, I flew in a balloon ... but for now, "eet eez Baboon!"



Finally a glimpse of what became all our favorites, the giraffe:

Later in the Segengeti, I got shots of Giraffes fighting. That's in a few days.

There are very many other animals to be seen in our Fotki gallery. Have a loot there if you wish.

Our first glimpse of Lions from afar... I couldn't really make them out through the view finder. I shot almost blindly. Amazed I get 'anything'!


...So many more far far superior lion shots to come days later... Just be patient.

Finally, to close out the day, I finally saw the Milky Way with my naked eye. It's was more visible there then anywhere else I've ever been in my 44 years... Taken with the Pentax 50mm f/1.4 lens:

The softness isn't softness of focus. If you look @ the original in my Fotki gallery, you can see the motion blur of the 1/8 degree the world turns in that 30 second exposure time.

[m8o]

Boy, 8/12 was a good day in Tarangire. Post 1 of 3 for this day. Here's some excerpts covering less then 1/2 a day, our 2nd day out. (a link to the 'best of' gallery: 070812 - [Best of] Tarangire National Park album | m8o | Fotki.com ... there's a separate gallery for the Zebras, Baboons, Elephants, others, and more to come for Giraffes)

Still using the 300mm w/1.4x TC ... still had the polarizer filter in place w/o realizing, so didn't turn-it and make use of it properly. There's a few pix that display the polarizing 'signature' tho. Like the 2nd landscape photo below.
(not in chronological order)

While driving from camp into the Park, I shot some pix of the two most dramatic types of trees in the area.

The 'tree of life' all over in Tarangire. Amazing how the elephants rips the bark off, or holes through the whole thing, or gouge 1/2 the trunk out and the tree keeps living. Here's a mostly unmollested version:


I had the driver/guide stop as I saw the mountain stacked behind the tree. The 'polarizing signature' I was talking about, with color enhanced in Lightroom:


Got some sharper birds this day then the day before:




Tho don't look at the full rez original of this below cus it's -real- noisy (morning clouds hadn't burned off ; was practically raining)

(I need to give NoiseNinja a try)

A closer view:


The morning was primarilly filled with primates and zebras. But there were some others....

Like the Dik-Dik:

(loads more of these later)

And elephants are everywhere in Tarangire ... this one needed a Q-tip:


...and some others animals interested us.

We got into the park pretty early. This one must have missed morning call... Or is the tough monkey life just too much for this one?


Is one bite'n the other one's wiener?!


...and...umm....

Monkey's version of "you wash my back I'll wash yours"?

...continued in next post...

[m8o]

...continuing with post 2 of 3 for our 2nd day out...

I mentioned Primates and Zebras filling the morning. We had one of the most very wildlife filled 100 yards we ever could have imagined.

We first came upon a pretty decent sized heard of Zebras:

You can see by example here the stripes doing what are meant to do; confuse the eyes.

We moved on after a good while. Though I didn't get a lot of good shots at that point (the pic above is actually from a few minutes later when we came upon the baboons below). Dunno exacly why; had trouble focusing.

We immediately came upon baboons to the right and left of us. Stopped a while then moved on. And after passing a bush on our left immediately came upon ... well...

(not very sharp sadly :( )

As we were approaching, and I'll 'assume' the male was done , the female spun around an immediatly started grooming the male.

Is it just me, or is this the same behaviour exhibitted by humans after sex? The dreamy eyes of the female looking at the male, and the complete dis-interest of the male looking off some other way... :

And the old "I'm ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille..." shots. How nice of him (I think if was 'him' not 'her) to stop and pose for me!


(which do you prefer? eyes of the 2nd are caught pretty well)

...and while there, there was a hawk (or eagle?) but still far away (heavy crop, it's a big sky out there!):


... continued in the next message ...

[m8o]

...continuing on... (3 of 3)

We then decided to move on. Didn't get very far; a few dozen feet?

There was a heard of Zebra just walking down the road. So we stopped to let them go whichever way they cared:







The colts look at lot less like a Donkey then the adults above:


And did you know their strips are brown when young to camoflage with the landscape better?


And turn blacker as they get older (far right):


...and to conclude... Are you look'n at me?!


Keep in mind, from the beginning of Post 2 of 3 above to the end of this one, was over the course of about 100 yards! (if even much less)

This is only 1.5 days in. Eight days of the Safari and a bit under 2500 RAW images still to go through... so there will be more... ;) much much more!

These shots are all from the album 070812 - [Best of] Tarangire National Park album | m8o | Fotki.com ; peer albums starting with "070812 ..." contain more shots of the animals that I didn't categorize as "the best"; but most still good (some have soft focus, yes). I'm throwing away RAWs liberally if they're not worth sharing. ;)

[m8o]

Example of "more to come..."

We hear from a passing guide there's a female lion on the prowel in the tall grass down the hill. But we can't really see her from the height of the grass. Plus, we're looking into the setting sun; also doesn't make for optimal photo shooting conditions either. There's about a dozen Land Rovers on the hillside on the other side of the field in-front of us. We can see where they're looking, but no joy for us. You can see the aggitation of all the baboons. And we continue to struggle to figure out just where that lioness is in the weeds. We know a pounce could come at any minute to an unsuspecting animal.

So finally, this baboon [me ] took a good deal of pride in being the 1st one in our Land Rover to realize "what's the problem? ... just look where the Baboons are looking!" It took a real evolved primate to figure that one out, huh? Here you [finally] go (about 50% square crop):


But we didn't have the angle the baboons had way up in the sausage tree. The lioness must have been crouched in a hunting position and we still couldn't get a good glimps of her. We soon gave up and left; had it been a photographer's safari we probably would have stayed.

I could have brought some detail out in the Baboon using fill light and lowering the black level (I'm luv'n Lightroom!); I did a tad. But that would have negated the natural effect of shooting into the setting sun, with light causing the glow of the hair and leaves.

Hope you enjoyed this circuitous route I took going from the the front to the back stories. ...and all for that matter. I certainly felt while it was going on!

[m8o]

Processing the remainder of the day's shooting. Painfully slow going. Luckily the Thai Iced Coffee I had with dinner kept me up until 5am w/o a problem.

Jumping ahead (I'll come back to the middle of the day's shots later -- a lotta real nice ones) ... So towards the end I come to some Dik-Diks. They're not shy. Probably the sharpest of the whole trip.


(great life in the eyes) ...and some crops:




So I notice detail in the reflection of the eye.


Here's a 500x500 crop up-sampled to 800x800 plus some unsharpen mask (too much?) to give you a good look but not subjecting you to pixel peeping.


So from the right that's a Tree of Life w/o leaves (it's winter there), Sun (flaring increase from sharpening but yes, lens has some CAs), Land Rover, Acacia tree .... umm, what was that 2nd to last? Yes, that's us in the Land Rover. I'm impressed. We weren't too close to them (about 50 ft?), and reflections from a convex surface are greatly reduced in size. So that detail is not something I was expecting especially when you look back @ the full frame shot at the start of this post!

I had been struggling to achieve good focus for most of the trip, and had been wondering if my K10D + Sigma 300mm + 1.4x or 2x TC is capable of the razor sharp detailed photos I see from others of these brands and others. My mind is now at ease...

...my frustrations of why there are times where I can't achieve sharpness in any shot until I relocate is a subject for another thread however...

[jayegirl]

Great shots!

[indiegirl]

Thank you for taking us along that amazing journey. Breathtaking stuff and it's evident you had a great time.

Jesse