What to Take to Borneo
A few suggestions that might be helpful:
You are going to find that you need your longest telephoto lenses and TC converters too — particularly when photographing from the Kinabatangan River.
Ling uses a 500 mm lens. I had my 200-400mm but needed to have my TC-20 attached to it much of the time.
The others all used tripods and Wimberleys in the boat but I managed either by hand-holding and using my knee as a bean-bag; or with my Wimberly on my monopod. My suitcase was already quite a bit over the airlines’ limits (I had to pack clothing for Dublin and London in addition to safari clothing) and there was no way that I could include a tripod.
But you also need a lens that is shorter than 300mm when photographing at Sepilok because they charge a truly hefty fee (in excess of $100 per day) for what they consider to be professional or commercial photography. The answer is to have a TC-20 iii in your pocket. You are not permitted to carry any sort of bag into the Orang Utan Rehab Preserve so make sure that you have a jacket with big pockets.
I used my 70-200mm (plus the TC) when photographing in the Orang Utan Reserve. I didn’t yet have the 300mm PF lens for this trip but it would have been a perfect lens for Borneo.
I also took my fish-eye along for some river-scape shots.
Many of your best sightings are likely to be under dense foliage, at dusk or even at night.
You are also likely to be using ultra-telephoto lenses (often with a TC attached) on live, rapidly moving creatures.
That combination means that you need fast shutter speeds (1/500 sec at the minimum) for freezing both camera and subject movement and a three times that for flying birds.
You will also be using lenses with reduced apertures (particularly if you are adding a TC onto them) so you will benefit from having cameras which can perform at really fast ISO speeds and which can auto-focus accurately and rapidly when it is too dark for the human eye to be able to do little more than merely frame the subject matter.
I have found that 6,400 ISO is about as high as I dare to go with my D3S but, in Borneo, I frequently needed much more speed than that (25,600, and even 51,200 ISO on several occasions) so the rental of a D5 might be worth your consideration?
The difficulty is that you will find that you need to use either long glass or a TC (meaning slower lenses with reduced apertures) while still needing fast shutter speeds.
The other aspect in which the D5 shone was in the vastly superior speed and accuracy of its new AF mechanism — even under very dim lighting and with lenses that are working at only f/8.
I have to admit that I was frequently astonished by the way that the D5 responded to some fairly extreme and very varied kinds of photography throughout the trip.
When I first read Nikon’s pre-release specifications, the D5 went straight to the top of my “I need!” list and it has more than fulfilled my expectations.
Also, Borneo is on the Equator so be prepared for doing a lot of walking in temperatures which can exceed 95°F (approaching 40°C) under blazing sun and with 90% humidity and consider the weight of your equipment with the climate in mind. And, because this is a rain-forest, you would want to have a light-weight poncho and some Deet stuffed in one of those pockets.
I didn’t have much time to spare at Sepilok so I was walking and standing from dawn to nightfall and didn’t stop for more than a quick swig of bottled water from the refreshment stand.
(I don’t ever carry water — even in a desert — because it weighs too much!)
One other thing: a bench in a boat feels awfully hard after a few hours and I was exceedingly glad that I had brought a self-inflating cushion with me. (That cushion also makes all the difference during 22-hour flights in cattle class!)
