"Ed" wrote in message
news:1115813963.712975.164380@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi, I'm travelling to Uganda to trek Mountain gorillas, and wonder what
>
> kind of suggestions I can get for my digital camera (Nikon D70)
> settings. I have used SLR
> with film exculsively in past safaris and this is my first trip with
> the digital Nikon. Are there recommendations for setting for pictures
> of dark subjects (black gorillas obviously) in covered muted jungle
> overhang?
>
I did a gorilla trek last year and used a D70.
Some small pictures can be seen on my website :
http://www.familie-aarts.com/~jan/ug/html/index.htm
It's in dutch, but only the left side, choose 12 or 15 to see the gorilla's
(the high res versions are removed because of webspace
limitations).
About the settings :
I used 1600 ISO a lot.
The gorilla's were dark, which is a challenge. Both matrix metering and
centre weighted metering was used. I'm still not sure which
results were the best... I didn't use spot metering on the gorilla's,
because they were too dark.
I made lots and lots and lots of pictures. But whenever a gorilla was in the
shadow of a branch and the sun was shining on the rest
of the shrubs, the result was far from good. Because of memory limitations,
I used only jpeg mode, may be raw mode can improve this
to get more texture in the dark areas. All pictures were post processed to
improve the lightness/contrast.
Whenever the gorilla's were in dense trees, it was too dark and flash is not
permitted.
I think in most occasions, they are not in a dense jungle, but between
shrubs (which gives Bwindi, the name of 'impenetrable' ).
A lot of luck is also involved.
During the first visit, we had to rush because a herd of elephants was in
the neighborhood.
Another group hard saw the silverback because it was lying beneath a shrub.
A third group had a perfect day and saw a group crossing the river in south
Bwindi.
Jan.
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