Kruger Park at Night

Civit Cat


Spitting Cobra


Spring Hare


Impala

Something I really enjoyed at Kruger was the night drive I took at the Lataba Camp. We were on the back of an open safari truck with sets of spot lights mounted on it, and it was led by a park ranger. Most of the animals in the park are nocturnal, and bush there is alive with life.  Believe me, you would not want to be on foot here at night.

The crown jewel that got away was a hunting Leopard we spotted. By the time I got the camera up, it had disappeared into the bush.

Tech Stuff:
I've stayed away from giving a lot of technical information, as I've really been travelling light, with one camera and three lenses, but this shoot involved some problems.

First of all, it's really dark. Most of the time, I had the D700 camera dialed up to either ISO 3200 or 6400. It's the environment the camera was built for, and it handles the low light beautifully.

To get the colour balance, I asked the ranger to train the spot light onto some white cars in the parking lot, and then used those as white balance point so I would have a clean look to the photos, not the orange "in the headlights look".

I used my AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8 with the vibration reduction, as most of the shutter speeds were in the range of 1/125th to 1/30th of a second.