Chapter Twenty-Five:
Technology Woes on
the Masai Mara
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Marg is frustrated with
my Brownie Starflash-like cameras and my Fisher Price laptop. So am I.
But, they serve their intended purpose and they’re light-weight, so I’m
fine with them.
The little travel laptop
is not a Fisher Price toy but a Lenovo, and it is a bit slow but it was the
fastest I could find at the last minute.
It’s also small and light, and that is really important. I don’t plan to do any editing of photos
while I’m traveling; I just need something to facilitate the download of photos
to external hard drives.
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| My tent at Governor's Camp. Transferring photos from SD card to hard drive. |
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I’m now shooting in
RAW+jpeg, and that makes for big files, so copying to external hard drives
prevents the laptop from getting clogged up with thousands of photos. One problem with technology on the Mara is the
occasionally unreliable electricity, all supplied by camp generators.
As for my cameras, when
Marg found out my entry-level DSLR cameras didn’t have histograms, I thought I
was going to have to search for smelling salts to revive her. Histograms are a very esoteric feature on
some cameras that show in graph form how the camera is handling exposure You are supposed to be able to look at the
histogram and make exposure adjustments accordingly.
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| Lion love. |
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Why you can’t just look
at the photo and tell is beyond me.
That’s what I do. So, I’m
guessing that amateurs who buy entry-level digital cameras aren’t allowed the
secret key to interpreting histograms and therefore histograms are not part of
those cameras.
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| Masai giraffes sparring. |
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| Cub at play. |
My theory goes to heck,
however, when I turn on my little point and shoot camera and find a histogram.
Marg didn’t faint after
all, but she did offer to let me use one of her professional-level cameras so I
could see the difference. I politely
declined. There is no way I will let someone
put a borrowed $3000 camera in MY hands.
Photographers never carry
just one camera on a photo trip. I
didn’t ask, but if Marg had a camera to loan, that meant she had multiple
cameras with her. Stuff happens and
cameras fail or get broken. You don’t want to be without a camera.
I have two entry level
Nikon cameras and two point and shoot cameras.
I have my big 150-600mm zoom lens on one and a 75-300mm zoom lens on the
other. One of our group was carrying a
lens that cost $14,000!
“When you’re ready to
move to the next level…” Marg began, and finished by recommending the Nikon D7200
model.
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| Red-billed oxpeckers on back of Cape buffalo. |
“I’m wondering if there
needs to be a ‘next level’,” I said.
I’m not going to sell my photos.
I use them for my blog and Facebook.
For those purposes, the cameras I have are just fine.
I will, however, let you
in on a secret. When I got back to
Anchorage, I stopped at Costco to pick up some groceries before driving the
hundred miles to home. Somehow, when I
wasn’t looking, a Nikon D7200 jumped into my shopping cart and hid under the
asparagus.
I suspect Marg had a lot
to do with that. It has a histogram.
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| Warthogs. |
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| Elephant dousing itself with dirt. |
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| Lion cubs |
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| This hippo is not smiling. This is a threatening show. |
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| A red-billed oxpecker has a symbiotic relationship with Cape buffalo. |
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| Zebra in marsh. |
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| A topi on guard duty atop a termite mound. |
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| Hyena |
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| Lioness and cubs |
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| Lion |
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| Serval cat. |
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| Leopards |
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| Lioness charging wildebeest just visible at bottom of photo. |
