A week ago I returned from a six week trip to South Africa and Botswana. I contacted the forum while away as I dropped one of my OM-1 cameras. The attached lens was fine and the camera still works to a degree. It lost the function of most of the buttons on the back such as ISO and back button focus. It has now gone in for repair.

Some forum members requested I post some images of the trip. I took thousands and it will take me ages to go through them all. But here is a random selection. They are just JPEGs as my internet is slow and I don’t want to be uploading huge RAW files.

The lenses used were three Olympus ones. 12-100, 40-150 F2.8, 150-400. Plus Leica Panasonic 16-36 (only occasionally). I would be a liar if I said every image was perfect. Far from it. But that would be more user than equipment. I was over the moon with the results I was getting. Especially of birds in flight where everyone else was struggling. And I loved how light my gear was. My friend has the same gear I used to have (Nikon D500 and Sigma 60-600 sport) and I was stunned at how much heavier it is.

I was also inspired to use higher ISO than I had in the past and was pleasantly surprised. I have the new Topaz AI version 2 and it is much improved and did a really good job on noise. I had some images where the subject was very small in the frame and I was super impressed with the upsizing Topaz now has. Not so impressed though that a 22MB file became over a gigabyte. Ouch. I don’t want too many of those. Pro capture was brilliant as usual and the reason why I have so many images to cull and process. And with silent shutter sometimes I got carried away and forgot to take my finger off the shutter.

If you have any questions ask away and I will endeavour to respond. A hint though. Just reply to the thread and describe the images you wish to ask questions about. Don’t “reply with quote” as it will copy every image to the thread which gets very tedious for anyone to scroll through.

Regards Carol

Lion at sunset. Zimanga.

Crocodile reflection

Three-banded Plover

Scarlet-breasted Sunbird

High ISO image of leopard after sunset. The sky was added in Photoshop but captured at the same location the next evening.

White-throated Swallows

Sunset on the Chobe River, Botswana

Sunset on the Chobe River, Botswana

African Skimmers. Very fast and a real challenge to photograph

Yellow-billed Stork

African Fish Eagle. One of 81 images all in focus.

The wild coast south of Durban in South Africa.

Cape Buffalo floodlit at overnight hide in Zimanga

White-fronted Bee-eater

Backlit Oxpecker

"I am not sharing"

Genet by spotlight

Yellow-billed Hornbill

Spotlight lion

Vulture wars

Cheetah at sunset with me on foot at Zimanga

Cheetah

African Jacana