Dave Burns Photo Tours & Safaris

For my photo safari tours, planning what to pack for photography gear has almost been routine for the last couple of years: I like having two SLRs, one attached to a long lens and one to a medium. This also gives me a backup in case one stops working (the closest Canon service center is probably South Africa: about 2200 miles away). I go a little further than I usually recommend to my clients and I bring a third SLR body because it has been converted for infrared. A couple wide to normal zooms for that and I’m set:

This year I’m trying something a little different.

For that typical kit above, once I add in the small bits like batteries, cards, and chargers, I’m well over 30 pounds – by itself, the Canon 200-400 f/4 is 8 pounds. In the future, I would love to bring a smaller, lighter system that still gets the job done. To experiment with that idea, I decided to leave the second SLR body home and bring my Fuji X-T1 and my two favorite lenses for it: Fuji’s 10-24mm and 55-200mm. And because it’s so small and light, I threw in the 35mm for some people pictures:

I really enjoyed having my Fuji X-T1 system on a few trips to Europe and I’m curious how it will perform on safari where the requirements for ruggedness and functionality are a little different. When I return, I’ll post some images and thoughts about how well Fuji’s top of the line mirrorless performs in the wild.

– Dave