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Iphone 14 Pro on African Safari

Kgwhite

I will be on my second K & T Classic Safari in June, my first was in 2016. In 2016, I brought my DSLR Nikon camera with various lenses and a monopod and was able to capture beautiful photos. On my upcoming safari, I am traveling only with my mother and contemplating taking just my iPhone 14 Pro. Has anyone done this on past safaris and been satisfied with the pictures they took? I am trying to simplify what I bring with me. Thank you!

Comments

mil

Kgwhite, Hi
I normally have taken my DSLR Nikon camera and my phone- Iphone 14 pro max and got excellent results with both.
I would recommend taking both... because you know the capacity of your camera and there will be shots that would work better with it and you'll regret not having it. , but only take 1 lens, the most versatile one... good range 70-400mm. and PLEASE!! NO!! "Monopod," that will make your trip miserable! and impossible to maneuver... to much stuff.

Also, as expensive all these trips are... you want to make sure you come back satisfied with both the adventure and your photos.

British

Recently, I’ve only taken my IPhone 14 on tours but will be taking my big camera for Africa again, I think they are best for animal shots.

scsmithwy

Hi Kgwhite,
I agree with mil. I would take your DSLR camera. While the iPhone14 Pro takes amazing pictures, it can’t do what your DSLR and a versatile lens can do. I was on the Kenya and Tanzania trip last summer. I used a 100-400mm lens with a 2x extender. While there were times when I didn’t get the landscape or context shot I might have taken otherwise, I could snap a quick pic with my iPhone which I kept on a strap around my neck. I read about using a strap for my phone in many of the posts and it was some of the best advise I found. It kept me from dropping my phone on a lion, which I had a difficult time imagining before the trip, and it kept it readily available.

Just a few examples: The first shot is with my iPhone 14 Pro:

This is the same lion at 200mm.

Here is another iPhone shot:

And here is one of the lions at 313mm:

I didn't go all the way to 800mm very often, though I do have a couple of photos I would have never have gotten otherwise. Looking back at my photos, I was shooting around 300-400mm fairly often. I think mil's suggestion of 70-400mm would serve you very well.

I haven't tried posting photos before so I hope it worked, and I hope the comparison helps. It was an incredible trip.

mil

Cathy the photos are amazing! love the lion with tip of his tong out.
I thought about the strap, and I think I'll do it , that will leave my hands free.
Thanks for the tip.

British

I had a great lanyard strap for my iPhone 7 but when I tried to find a strap for my iPhone 14 max….the bigger one if that is what it is called, I could not find one as good. My husband had the regular sized phone and it fit his better. However, the straps on the new lanyards were similar to the ones on whisper devices and not as comfortable, so I took the strap off the old lanyard and put it on the new part which cradles the phone. It is quite tricky to do. The new part around my phone is very tight, one of the corners was prone to come off. I’ll try to find a photo of me with my phone round my neck. Everyone thought they were a great idea on our recent trip.
Fortunately on safaris, you don’t already have a Whisper device to deal with as well as camera and binoculars round your neck. 🤪
If anyone.finds a better solutions for the bigger phones, please post here.

British

Yep, no mistaking me for a tourist with phone and whisper round my neck!

Smiling Sam

British - I'd trade in your husband's iPhone, the camera takes sideways pictures! 😂😂

BKMD

^ I was going to write that. you wake up too early!

British

No it doesn’t, he was lying down on his side whem he took that photo! 😛

gladysorlando984

There's a lanyard sold by Shift Cam, a bit expensive but very sturdy, I've been using lanyards for my phone for a couple of years, they're great

Kgwhite

Thank you for your input! I will take the Nikon and the iPhone 14Pro. Will leave the big lens and monopod at home (on previous trip I had my husband and teenage son to carry the gear). Your photos are getting me very excited for next month. I am looking forward to sharing the experience with my mom!

scsmithwy

It’s also on the more expensive side but Peak Design makes a line of phone cases that have openings on the bottom that accommodate their anchors allowing you to use any of their straps. The straps can be easily adjusted, allowing you to wear it over one shoulder and under the other arm so it isn’t hanging on you neck if you like to wear your camera around your neck as well. The anchor system also allows you to quickly pop your phone off the strap to hand it to someone else to take a photo of you without taking the strap off and then pop it back on. I did a bunch of research and ended up getting a phone case and slide lite strap for all four of my family that went. It worked really well.

They have a great wrist cuff too that you can use to keep your camera secure without having a long strap that can get stuck on things.

MikeHenderson

For safari type pictures, you need telephoto and the iPhone does not take good telephoto pictures. The camera on the iPhone does not have a "long lens" so when you attempt to take a telephoto picture, what's really happening is they are enlarging (zooming) the picture digitally. A bit of zoom can be okay, but the image quickly loses crisp detail.

For good telephoto pictures, you need a long lens.

But let me go a bit further into cameras and lenses. The lens you need for good telephoto depends on the size of the sensor in your camera. With a smaller sensor, you can use a shorter lens and get good magnification (telephoto).

But there’s a tradeoff. Most camera companies want to advertise that their camera has lots of pixels, such as 12 megapixels. Their customers seem to judge a camera by the number of megapixels.

As you increase the number of pixels on a fixed size sensor, each pixel gets smaller, and that means that each pixels receives fewer photons of light and that increases the noise in the image and can affect how quickly the camera can focus, especially in low light.

Very small cameras, ones that will fit in your pocket, usually have a 1/2.3 inch sensor. Because of that small sensor, the lens is small.
As you go up to larger sensors, such as a 4/3 sensor, you get better images, but the lenses get larger.

I now use a camera with an APS-C size sensor because it gives me decent images and the lenses are an acceptable size.

There’s no doubt that a camera with a full 35mm sensor will give the best images, but the lenses are quite large and expensive.

I recently returned from a trip to Africa and took telephoto pictures with my APS-C camera. You can see some pictures of the animals at https://www.mikeandjudytravel.com/2023-1RiversAndRails-06.htm

[Added note: The iPhone obviously has a very small sensor but can produce good images. How do they do it? They use a technology known as “computational photography”. The iPhone is shooting video – that’s why you can get that “live image” that comes with each JPEG. They take a sequence of those video frames and mathematically combine them, which tends to wash out the noise from the sensor.

But that doesn’t help much with telephoto pictures and that’s why telephoto pictures with the iPhone are pretty miserable.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max is going to use a longer lens to provide better telephoto images. Google it if you’re interested.]

British

I don’t know about your safari Mike, but when I take mine, the majority of the animals are right by the safari vehicles. Hey I even had an elephant wrap it’s trunk round the the top bar of our safari vehicle one time. Leopards and lions, rhinos have been near enough to touch too. I got great pictures of gorillas with my iPhone 7 which were a few feet away.

MikeHenderson

I don’t know about your safari Mike, but when I take mine, the majority of the animals are right by the safari vehicles. Hey I even had an elephant wrap it’s trunk round the the top bar of our safari vehicle one time. Leopards and lions, rhinos have been near enough to touch too. I got great pictures of gorillas with my iPhone 7 which were a few feet away.

No, my situation was not like that. The animals were some distance from us and were skittish. It would have been impossible to get that close to many of the animals. We were close to some, such as elephants, but the cats were not going to allow the vehicles to get close to them.

Perhaps I was in a wilder area than you were. I suppose in some game reserves, with lots of tourist visits, the animals are so accustomed to the vehicles that they ignore them. Sort of an open-air zoo.

Certainly, an iPhone will produce good pictures if you have lots of light and are close to your subject. But if you’re trying to take a picture of a subject some distance away, the iPhone does not produce good images.

Here's a leopard. I was probably 75 meters from her. Note the nice sharp focus on her face.

And a cheetah. I was close to 100 meters from him, and I got a head and shoulders shot, with good focus. You simply cannot come close to that with an iPhone.

Another Cheetah close-up, good full-face lighting. I like to do portraits, including of animals. Note the shallow depth of field - his face is in good focus and his body is blurred. Background highly blurred. The point of focus is probably his eyes. I was closer to him for this photo, maybe 40-50 meters.

I have many more examples on my blog, the URL which I posted above.

British

Whoops, ignore the rogue photo.

sudhamali

Nice conversation about iPhone vs cameras with all kinds of lenses.To me pictures are for reinforcing memories;to that end I am happy with iPhone pictures specially with the newer phones.I also have cameras with telephoto lenses but have not mastered the full use of it.One thing for sure I have encountered some rude and selfish photographers on our tours who hog the best places with long telephoto lenses and ruin the view for others.

Smiling Sam

British - you have some nice pictures, but Mike's point is valid. You can tell that the rhinoceros picture you posted is not nearly as sharp as some of the others. I assume that is because the rhino was probably a bit further away. The clarity on iPhone photos definitely degrades as a function of zoom.

That said it all depends on what the individual is interested in. My experience is that you certainly get enough opportunities to take pictures of the animals when they are close enough to the vehicle that an iPhone would be great. However, with only an iPhone you will definitely lose the opportunity to get the clear distant shots that Mike posted.

If you're OK possibly missing some distant shots, with clarity, and are more interested in the ease of simply carrying an iPhone then that is your answer. Like most things on the forum, it's always a matter of personal preference. People should do what's right for them.

British

Yes, which is why I will take my camera too. That rhino was likely to have been taken with my iPhone 7

JohnS

For our recent trips I have gone to just using my iPhone. These have been river cruise and land tours. Our tours that have involved safaris, Northern India and Nepal and South Africa, I have used my Nikon DSLR camera with 16-300 zoom lens. I used my iPhone for supplemental photos and videos. For wildlife photos I believe the DSLR camera is far superior to the iPhone for photography.

For my iPhone I have some external lens attachments and also use a film rig which I find immensely useful. I did a post on this last year which I have linked below.

We are on Scottish Isles cruise in a couple of weeks and I am still debating if I should take my real camera or just my iPhone with my accessories. If anyone reading this has been on this cruise and can comment on taking the real camera. Is there enough scenery or wildlife to warrant this? The extra weight to take the camera is a concern.

Post about my iPhone accessories

MikeHenderson

One thing for sure I have encountered some rude and selfish photographers on our tours who hog the best places with long telephoto lenses and ruin the view for others.

On the tour I was on, we were in vehicles that had three rows of seats. If you sat in the first row on one safari, you moved to the second row on the next one. The people in the third row moved to the first row. That gave everyone a chance to be in the "best" position.

Additionally, it never hurts to be a bit assertive and tell someone that you would like to be able to take some pictures, also. Most people will respect a decent request.

sudhamali

The key words “most people would respect”!Our experience happened in Galapagos where there were more than one with foot long lenses and always in the way.

MikeHenderson

The key words “most people would respect”!Our experience happened in Galapagos where there were more than one with foot long lenses and always in the way.

I understand. Sometimes you just have to push your way forward.

gladysorlando984

I have a Samsung S22 Ultra and the camera is amazing, I can really zoom for distant shots and they are very clear. My personal preference as I never liked the Apple products.