Optical zoom for safari

Muahahaha

Heading on safari in a couple of countries in Africa in the summer and need to get something better than a smartphone. Im not a serious photographer so just want a digital point and shoot with a optical zoom that could capture an animal like a lion or cheetah at up to 50-75 metres distance without going into the digital zoom and degrading the shot. Is 30x sufficient for what Im after or should I be going higher towards 40x, 50x?

Also I believe digital cameras can suffer from low shutter speeds which can make capturing wildlfife that is moving at speed difficult. What should I look out for in the specs that tells me it has a fast shutter speed, Im not sure how it is measured

Gregor Samsa

Max shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. So 1/2000s, 1/4000s, etc. That's two-thousandth's or four-thousandth's of a second. Sounds incredibly fast, but you'd need to to freeze say the beating wings of even an average garden bird in flight close to you.

It shouldn't' be confused with the shooting speed (or burst speed), which is the maximum number of photos the camera can take in a second (5fps, 15fps, 30fps).

Both of these attributes together would be useful for nature shooting - the shutter speed to freeze fast motion, and the shooting speed to give you more photos to choose from in terms of composition for a given situation that happens in the blink of a eye. Say a cheetah jumping down from a tree: If you shoot at 3 fps, you might not get it in mid air at all. If you shoot at 30fps, you might have 20 mid-air shots to choose the best from.

Of course there's trade offs - the faster your shutter speed, the less light is getting into the camera (so relatively the more light you need to be properly exposed). The faster your shooting speed, the more photos you're taking in a given situation, so the more storage they're taking up. For shutter speed, unless you're doing something specialist, you likely won't need anything more than 1/4000s, and 1/2000 will probably be fine most of the time. I certainly wouldn't buy any camera that couldn't do 1/2000s.

10-15fps will probably do you for shooting speed.

As for "zoom", 30x, 50x etc isn't really an accurate way of measuring what you need - it's kind of a marketing thing. 50x zoom on one camera could give you a completely different view to 50x zoom on another, as it would depend on the camera's sensor sizes and he focal length of the lens at the wide end. What you could look out for in the spec is the "35mm equivalent focal length". This kind of translates the focal length of the lens to what you would see if you used a 35mm camera (like a full frame mirrorless or DSLR), which is regarded as a kind of standard.

So, for instance, the Sony DSC-HX350 has a 50x optical zoom. The Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82 has a 60x optical zoom. But they both have a maximum "35mm equivalent focal length" of 1200mm - meaning at "full zoom", they both will zoom in the same as each-other. The difference is that at the wide angle end, the Sony starts at 24mm (equivalent), whereas the Panasonic starts at 20mm, and the zoom ratio is the long end focal length divided by the short end. 1200/24=50, 1200/20=60.

So, to give you some perspective, on a professional full frame camera, most people going on safari would be looking to take a 600mm lens and a 1.4x teleconverter - which would give them a max "zoom" of 840mm. Very, very few photographers would have more reach than that. The two cameras I mentioned above will "zoom" to an equivalent of 1200mm, which is more. The full frame camera will take a better picture, capture more light, and the bigger sensor will resolve more detail and allow for more cropping.

The big question is, what's your budget? You can get a Sony DSC-RX10 IV for €2000. it's 25x zoom, or 24-600mm equivalent. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ82 is €369, which has a 60x zoom (20-1200mm equivalent). The Sony will take "better pictures" than the Panasonic, the reason being that the Sony has not only a higher resolution sensor, but it's a physically bigger sensor too. But would the Sony be €1600 better for what you'll be doing? Very unlikely, to be honest. Either will give you much better pictures than your phone, or most compact digital cameras. On this note, I wouldn't use a compact digital camera, even with all the zoom in the world, for a safari trip like this. The ones I'm talking about here are "bridge cameras". They're bigger, so they'll take up a bit more space in your bag, but (generally) have better quality, and have better ergonomics than a compact that can fit in your pocket.

If I were you, I'd decide on your budget first, then take a look at the bridge cameras in that range. You can't go wrong with Sony, Panasonic, Nikon or Canon. 600mm eqiv. would be the minimum I'd go with, but equally, anything over 1200mm wouldn't impress me (it's likely not to be particularly good quality). Hopefully it won't be raining at all, but you might be in a dusty environment. Look out for weather-sealing. I killed a compact Canon camera stone dead years ago dropping it for a second on a sand dune. A small amount of sand got into the lens mechanism, seizing it up, and it wouldn't even turn on.

Get a few good memory cards and at least one spare battery!

Muahahaha

Gregor thanks a million for that comprehensive answer. And yeah I had already discounted compact digital cameras as the quality of photograph from them is lacking and Id say they would be a poor choice when trying to capture wildlife that might be far away. The bridge category though is exactly what I need as I dont want it to take up too much space in my bag, it offers a good half way house between being compact but also capable of taking great photographs. I do actually have a 10 year old Nikon D40 with a 18-55mm lens on it and had thought of buying a longer lens for that but with all the roughing around my bag is going to get on buses and trains I know it would get damaged. And also the safari is just one part of a larger trip so Id be carrying it around and not using it the vast majority of days.

My budget is around 350 so the Panasonic Lumix FZ82 you mentioned seems like a great shout. Thanks again for all the pointers, it was very helpful of you.

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120244393#Comment_120244393

Enjoy the trip, it'll be some experience! And don't forget to post some photos up here (https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058167691/random-photos-lvi-1-024-pixels-longest-side-no-comments-in-thread)

Muahahaha

Thanks Gregor, will do