Not to highjack the other thread about Namibia and trophy photos but a question I have often wondered. Are taking photos on a safari or any hunt for that matter important to you? I just see so many what in my mind are poor photos that are posted. With an extra minute of time a poor photo can be a decent photo.

For me, photos are as important as the trip itself. They are how I relive what I have done and show my son and friends what happened. I take pics of everything. From the fauna and flora to animals, to camp you name it.

Photos are a click away on my phone and easily shown to anyone who asks. those who actually come to my home to see the animals in the trophy room are few and far between as it is just not something where i say hey do you want to see my trophy room.

Now on the other hand, one of my best friends could careless about photos. He said the mount in his trophy room is where all the memories are not in the pictures.

In fairness to the outfitter and my friends they know without a shadow of a doubt we are going to take a lot of photos and it might be a 100 looking for the one right one.

Do you care about your pics?

Obviously a personal choice. I love well composed trophy photos. I think most hunters do.

quote:

Do you care about your pics?

I used too, but do not anymore.

If it is pictures of clients and their kills, I will take them, but as I get older and it is just me and Lora, they really don't mean a lot.

This is another one of those it is up to the individual and their beliefs/desires.

I agree it is a personal choice. Just curious how others view it. I expect answers to be all across the board but curious to read them. I don’t see there being a right or wrong answer.

I love photos and videos just as much as I love hunting and shooting.

I take quality small, pocket cameras with me, and give one each member of our safari.

Some bring their own cameras too, but these are very handy, and can be carried in the pocket.

My instructions are take as many photos as you like, of as many things as you like.

In the evening I collect all memory cards and copy them to my computer.

There is so much more to a safari than just hunting.

There is an incredible amount of very interesting things.

From rocks, rock formations, trees, flowers, insects and so on.

I have photos on my shooting room of hunts we did 40 years ago.

I remember very clearly the day each time I look at any of them.

I do not go anywhere without a camera, even here at home.

A camera is the first thing I put in my carry on bag.

I am travelling tomorrow, and have 3 different cameras, plus a video camera and a drone.

I know I will get this question, so I am going to tell you right now the cameras I am taking.

Panasonic SZ200 pocket camera.

I have not used this one before, but have been using the same make a series of models for years, and they are the best of this size.

This one should be good as it has a one inch sensor too.

I like these for both the quality of photos and videos. I always set both at the highest level.

Canon SX60 HS - I have not used this one before, but picked it for its 60X optical zoom.
I have used the Nikon P900 with an 83X zoom. This one has rather soft photos, but absolutely essential if you want to reach that far.

Sony Rx10 iv - this has become my standard mid size camera. Fantastic quality in both pictures and videos.

Sony AX700 4K video camera
DJI Phantom 4 Pro 2 Plus. This is a new model for me, and have not used it yet.
Have used the previous model, and it was great.

In fact, as far as I am concerned, all other makes of drones are far inferior to anything DJI makes.

I have tried several, but non comes even close to the usability and quality of these DJI models.

Got my daughter interested in both shooting and photography.

And I am so proud that she is becoming great at both.

She took some photos and videos while diving which are absolutely stunning!

Borrow that only America Express advert NEVER LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT.

I mean a camera

Photos are very important. I regret not having taken some photos of some cool stuff on safaris. It just didn't enter my mind at the time. If you see something interesting on safari then get that camera out.

I was amused at those that say they only have the trophy and not photos. I have photos on the wall with each of the mounts in my trophy room.
And Mrs Blacktailer and I each carry a camera at all times and I try to remember to take as many pics as possible. If they don't turn out they are easily deleted.

What Crazyhorse said + 1

I have photos going back to grade school and rarely ever see one.
Only special cases, animals, or people are photographed.
In recent hunt, I tossed hogs I shot into brush for buzzards- no pix. I did take a pic of the 600 pound hog a year back, but that was the largest ever shot. shot 5 since then and it has become routine. They are pests like coyotes, rats, and rattle snakes which are not worth pictures.

quote:

Originally posted by crshelton:
What Crazyhorse said + 1

I have photos going back to grade school and rarely ever see one.
Only special cases, animals, or people are photographed.
In recent hunt, I tossed hogs I shot into brush for buzzards- no pix. I did take a pic of the 600 pound hog a year back, but that was the largest ever shot. shot 5 since then and it has become routine. They are pests like coyotes, rats, and rattle snakes which are not worth pictures.

Trying to look at paper photos has become rather difficult.

I have digitized all photos from the past, and we all enjoy looking at them now, whenever we wish.

The whole family enjoy them now, as we can give copies away very easily.

I build my own computers specifically for this, with the requirements of 4K video editing, I pick the most advanced CPU, graphic card and plenty of storage.

My latest computer has 128GB RAM, 2 2TB SSDs, one for the system and one for processing.
And 10 12 TB hard drives for storage.

It is amazing how much storage high resolution photos and 4K videos take!

Having unlimited financials helps a bunch.

Many of us don't have the funding you do Saeed.

Fantastic pictures, and many thanks for sharing them with us.

George

Yes, photos are essential if you want to get the most lasting enjoyment from a hunt or a trip, and are the very best way to share your experiences with others. "One picture is worth a thousand words" is more than just a saying.

But let me caution you about preserving your photos: ALL photos are originally electronic now. But preserving photos electronically is an "immature" technology. If you had photos on the most popular medium from 1995, the floppy disc (either format), then finding a computer to display them is virtually impossible now. Did you put your photos on CD? You can't even buy a computer with a CD/DVD drive now. SD chip? Well, that works for now, but will it five years from now? And what about degradation? None of this stuff is more than about 25 years old and no one knows for sure how time will treat the various forms of digital storage. We know that all matter degrades, but we don't yet know the useful life of that little plasticky SD card or how long you can successfully retrieve data from it.

I learned this the hard way: I had dozens of photos of our home (which I built myself) during its various construction phases stored on my computer's hard drive. The computer started "acting up", maybe with a virus or whatever, so I sent it to a service technician to have it fixed. Well, he successfully wiped the viruses out, but the photos went with them. Something similar can, and WILL eventually, happen to anything you have stored on a computer, which is only a temporary place to keep any record.

Uploading to a cloud service might be a good back-up, but who's to say how that might be impacted if your cloud server is washed away in a Tsunami or swallowed by the earth in an earthquake?

All this is leading up to one important step you should take with your favorite photos: Print them on high-quality paper and store them in proper jackets. Printed photos are still with us going back to before the Civil War. Paper is a time-tested way of preserving a document.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention the videos we took of the Canadian bear hunt my son and I went on for his college graduation gift in 1998, just 20 short years ago. Great videos of a great hunt, with lots of sentimental meaning for us. Captured forever on Compact VHS.

Well, no one has been able to look at that tape in the last ten years. "Converter" cartridges to display CVHS on a regular VHS player can't be found even if all of the old VHS players weren't broken and tossed in the garbage, anyway. I doubt that anyone in the family will ever see those precious videos again.

I take a lot of photos and sometimes the photos I post may not be the best quality because they are grabbed on the run, candid photos, etc.. I take so many photos of everything that I don't stop to do it. I'll discover a great photo on the airplane ride home so the subject may be important to me but the composition may not be the best.

If you are in the picture, then chances are it was taken by the PH or someone on his staff. It should come as no surprise that PH's have probably taken more hunting safari trophy pics than all the hunters put together.

They have, in general, excellent knowledge of what constitutes a good trophy picture in terms of setting up the trophy, composition, light, even camera operation for the most common cameras. I only say this to encourage even the most photographically challenged hunter to take a camera with him and let the PH take the picture.

Those of you who have read my hunt reports know that I take a lot of pictures, it's my most practiced hobby since I can only go on a safari once every few years, but I take pictures all the time. My favorite pictures are of trackers, cooks, campsites, hunting terrain, hunting buddies, local villagers etc which are far more valuable to me than my trophy pictures.

I will second the advice to print your favorite photographs, or do one of those photographic books. Virtual mediums have limits, computer drives crash or get corrupted, some virtual media are known to degrade with time, but books and prints are known entities. For me, I prefer to have my safaris in print in a coffee table type of book with a short narrative rather than solely on a computer when sharing with a friend or acquaintance. The digital images are for sharing with AR.

This picture was taken by Clinton Van Tonder in Tanzania (I just turned it into a B&W).

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...f-bw_zps00de67b0.jpg

To me photos are the most important souvenirs of a trip. You can look at them and instantly remember the experience associated with each image.

With the growing issues around trophy imports, pictures are becoming more important than ever before.

You need to keep pace with technology.

Years ago, when we had only CDs, and low resolution digital cameras, I used CDs to back up my photos.

I ended up with hundreds of CDs.

Then DVDs came along, and one can put several CDs on a single DVD.

I did that.

Then photos became large, requiring a lot more space.

Now I use large capacity hard disks, in duplicates.

Makes life so much easier.

We really should be grateful for technology in photography today.

A friend brought an old USB 2 hard drive he wanted me to copy for him.

It was taking quite a long time to copy, at around 10-12MBs.

I told him he should be glad it was not floppies - which had a write speed of 0.15MBs.

His hard disk would have taken over 80 days, 24 hours a day, to copy!

Current hard disks top 200 MBs.

SSDs go up to 550 MBs.

For those who wish to store photos for a period of time.

Use a quality external hard disk.

I have never had one fail, and I have been using them from day one.

Short of physical damage - like being dropped, all last for years.

Photos are extremely important. My wife took over 900 on our recent trip to Zambia.

Slowly going through and picking the best ones , deleting the bad one, blurred, etc. Will probably still end up with over three hundred.

The Smithsonian ( magazine) ran a excellent article on the problem of preservation of the pictorial history of our world in the digital age.

Apart from the issues with the fact that there has been a evolution in the actual hardware to which pictures are archived there is this problem of digital decay built into the format used to record the photograph.

For historians and archivists this is going to be a problem because within just a few decades pictures will not be accessible due to the fact that technology has been dropped from use and or the fact that digital decay, some built into the format (JPEG as example) occurs

For the computer challenged, maybe you don't want to spend a lot of time or money on backing up the pictures on your computer. Maybe they're all over the place in different directories and folders, meaning a real pain in the a.. to find them.

You might consider this:

https://toptechshifts.com/photostick/A2D1/?thrive=1

Photos ar first don’t mean much. As the years roll by they mean a lot.

Photos are important to me. Not necessarily in any particular vein, but I find as I get older I get a great deal of pleasure from memories of good things and times. Places I can no longer go and things I may no longer be able to do, especially.

Posting photos on social media is NOT NECESSARILY important to me, depending on what they are. Hanging in my living room is good enough.

I take tons of photos. For trophies, I may take hundreds with the animal in various positions because I may only like one of them at the end of the day.

The trophies on the wall are great, but flipping through photos of the entire trip is the best way to recall things you have forgotten (and keeping a journal of each day).

I always regret not taking more photos.

For SAEED or anyone else with knowledge.If I was to buy one camera what should it be. I would be looking for one that small enough to carry with me at all times. Thanks for all suggestions.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny reb:
For SAEED or anyone else with knowledge.If I was to buy one camera what should it be. I would be looking for one that small enough to carry with me at all times. Thanks for all suggestions.

You need to tell me what you need the camera for.

Example, should it be a pocket camera?
Should it have a long zoom?

Very good pocketable cameras are SONY RX100 VI - this one has an 8X zoom, and very good photos and video quality.

Pocketable, PANASONIC ZS 200 - 15x zoom and practically as good as the SONY above.

Pocketable, PANASONIC ZS 80 - 30X zoom, but not as good photos and videos as the above two.

Look at my hunt report, most of the photos there were taken by this camera.

A little bit larger,the SONY RX10 IV is very hard to beat. Very good quality both photos and videos.

Whatever camera you decide to get, if you are taking it on travels, have at least one spare battery, and a large capacity, fast SD card.

Sporty about not being more specific. Looking for a good all around camera. One that is small enough that you would carry it with you when out hunting. Not looking for something with big telephoto lens.

quote:

Originally posted by Clem:
I always regret not taking more photos.

I have a similar regret.
In my life as well as all the rest of my friends here, theres been friends and bird dogs come and go, places and locations been to and forgotten, moments recorded or not with family, partners and peers.
Iwish I had more pictures of my dogs, my kid, my hunting buddies and the scenery we were in and saw.
Those picture might sit in a box for a decade, might never get looked at on the wall in the dusty frame or be stored on a laptop long forgotten, but once re discovered some sure make me tear up.

If the house burns I'll get the photos out long before I try to retrieve the guns, taxidermy or flyrods.

Hell yea photos are important. I don't have an eidetic memory. I need photos to bring me back to the place of my hunts. Details forgotten can be brought back with a simple photo. Even on my ordinary deer hunts I take multiple photos every day of nature, deer, and other animals and put them in a file for that year.

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:

quote:

Originally posted by Clem:
I always regret not taking more photos.

I have a similar regret.
In my life as well as all the rest of my friends here, theres been friends and bird dogs come and go, places and locations been to and forgotten, moments recorded or not with family, partners and peers.
Iwish I had more pictures of my dogs, my kid, my hunting buddies and the scenery we were in and saw.
Those picture might sit in a box for a decade, might never get looked at on the wall in the dusty frame or be stored on a laptop long forgotten, but once re discovered some sure make me tear up.

If the house burns I'll get the photos out long before I try to retrieve the guns, taxidermy or flyrods.

I don't regret not taking enough photos while hunting or fishing; I regret not having more of my daughter as she was growing up.

quote:

Originally posted by Clem:
I always regret not taking more photos.

^^^^
This

I have a bunch of old photos from my grandparents/great grandparents.

One regret is no one putting down who/what/where/when of the photos.

One of my great grandparents loved taking photos, but refused to get them of himself. I have no idea what he looked like. We have some old ones of groups when he was a young man, but my dad can’t identify him.

It’s kind of sad...

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny reb:
For SAEED or anyone else with knowledge.If I was to buy one camera what should it be. I would be looking for one that small enough to carry with me at all times. Thanks for all suggestions.

There really aren't any "bad" pocket digitals these days. But don't spend extra money to buy one which has more features and capabilities than you'll use.

Compactness of size is the most important feature because the "very best" camera is the one you have with you and ready when the photo opportunity presents itself. Your four-pound, $7,000 Nikannontax sitting back in your room because it is both too bulky and too expensive to take with you to the field is pretty useless when you want a photo of that 55" kudu where it fell.

I take lots of photos during my hunting trips. I then print enough to an album. Most of my friends like looking at a photo album rather than on a computer or electronic device. I love digital cameras. But there is something about passing an album around I do not want to quit doing.

I cannot remember the last time I actually printed a picture. I have made some albums of my safaris and past hunting trips on occasion.

I have zero concern or worry about all of my digital photos. I have a backup of a backup of a backup and two of those are online by legit companies. Zero worry in this regard.