Camera
Equipment : Land
There is no
doubt that the Galápagos Islands are a place that nature photographers
dream of. There aren't many places around where you can get so close
to so many species of unique wildlife in their natural habitats,
both above and below water. You can burn ungodly amounts of film
here given enough time.
For land camera equipment, we use 35 mm Nikon SLRs. (as well as
the fine Sony
CD1000 digital camera for instant gratification purposes
and to capture short video sequences). As with diving gear, you
will want to bring some type of backup camera body. If you don't
have a backup SLR body, then at least bring a small point &
shoot, or even some disposable cameras. This is one place you don't
want to be with a broken or malfunctioning camera body. For lenses,
you will have opportunities to use everything from super-wide angles
to telephoto lenses to macro lenses. Many of the references we found
stated you don't need anything more than a 200 mm lens here because
you can get so close to the wildlife, but we suggest 400 mm is a
better maximum.
One of the protections instated by the Galápagos National Park is
each island has designated trails designed to minimize the impact
of human visitors on the island's flora and fauna. One of the jobs
of the naturalist, which you must have with you on every landing,
is to make sure you abide by the rules of the park and stay on the
trails. This was perfectly fine with us, as many animals were right
on the trails themselves! We didn't consider the trails overly restrictive,
and in many areas they were quite liberal in the amount of ground
you could cover.
We found having
a longer telephoto lens (400 mm) helpful when you needed more focal
length for subjects that were a bit farther away from the trail.
This
isn't absolutely necessary by any means, but it was useful in certain
situations when we weren't able to get as close. Having close focusing
ability on your telephoto lenses is also an obvious benefit. Though
we were tempted to bring a large 500 mm f4 lens, we were glad we
didn't. The occasions on which it might have been useful were too
few to justify the weight of carrying it down there, as well as
the risk involved of taking such a lens on wet landings or an inflatable
boat.
Zoom lenses
will definitely help minimize the amount of gear you need to bring
with you, and help you react quicker to changing situations. Remember
we stated you need to stay on the trails here, and if a subject
moves away from you (or closer!), you can't necessarily follow it.
For this trip, we gave our new Nikon
80-400 mm VR (vibration
reduction) lens quite a workout. A zoom lens with this range, excellent
optics, good close focusing abilities, and vibration reduction features,
turns out to be an ideal lens for the subjects in Galápagos. The
Canon equivalent 100-400 mm IS (image-stabilized) would be a similar
choice, or other lenses with this type of range. You could be doing
full body shots of sea lions one moment, turn around and photograph
a blue-footed booby with a chick the next. These lenses just offer
amazing versatility in this environment.
The image stabilization
/ vibration reduction feature also came in very handy. Since we
were on a boat most of the time where tripods are useless, the VR
helped stabilize shots of shorelines, dolphins in the water, and
flying seabirds. Where the rule of thumb is to handhold at no less
than 1/focal length, we were routinely shooting at 400 mm at 1/125
to 1/60 of a second and getting tack sharp shots. Also there are
many occasions on the trails where, if you have a tripod, there
just wasn't enough time to set it up, and handholding became necessary.
Since
we are mentioning tripods, this is probably a good time to discuss
their use in the Galápagos. We know many nature photographers who
would rather cut off their left arm rather than give up their tripod,
and we aren't too far away from that. We had read mixed recommendations
regarding bringing a tripod to the islands, and ultimately it ends
up being a personal choice. We did end up bringing ours, and can
say we are glad we did, despite their inconvenience at times. Other
than obvious stability reasons, tripods tend to make you slow down
and concentrate on composition, rather than just taking grab shots.
They were useful for doing wide-angle scenics as well as shooting
at slower shutter speeds when the light was very overcast.
It
is the slowing down that can make you the "tripod-carrying, always
holding up the group, photo nut" of the tour group that you are
with. This is highly dependent on the type of island tours you are
getting. Unfortunately, we had a very, fast paced naturalist, that
at times, barely allowed you to grab a few shots at any particular
point, let alone time to actually set up a tripod and concentrate.
We tried to strike a balance between holding up the group and taking
grab shots handheld along the way. After all, it was a long way
to come and not take advantage of the opportunities there. This
is why it is very important to do some research regarding the photography
conditions you will be held to prior to booking your trip. The time
constraints didn't quite match what we were led to believe by our
tour company. It is really up to the naturalist designated for your
group and any arrangements made beforehand.
If you are
going to bring a tripod, we recommend either a Carbon-Fiber one
(like the Gitzo
series) or a medium sized aluminum one like the Manfrotto/Bogen
3021 series, again to keep the weight down in your luggage. Carbon
fiber has the advantage not corroding when exposed to salt water,
but don't come cheap. Tripods with three independent legs (rather
than tied all together with support braces) are best for nature
photography as they can adapt to an infinite number of uneven ground
conditions.
Plan on bringing
a couple of essential filters with you. A polarizer comes in very
handy, especially for eliminating glare from wet rocks, water, and
plants. Don't go to the Galápagos without a polarizing filter! Be
wary of using them on wide-angle lenses, as the polarizing effect
can be uneven. Since there will be occasions when the sky is much
brighter than the landscape, a Graduated Neutral Density filter
was also useful for those occasions. We had a 2-stop, soft grad
from Singh
Ray, but wished we 
had
up to 3 stops for many of the scenics. At a bare minimum, some type
of protective filter will keep the occasional salt spray or marine
iguana nose discharge from landing on the front element of your
lens. (Marine Iguana's get rid of the salt content in their body
by discharging salt water through their noses - so be careful on
those face portraits!)
Flash is strictly
prohibited in the Galápagos islands, as the National Park has deemed
flash photography potentially disturbing to the wildlife. Whether
you believe flash is disturbing to wildlife or not, it is best to
respect the wishes of the park and work with the natural light conditions.
We can certainly understand their reasoning given the amount of
tourists that come through the park with cameras. You don't necessarily
have to leave it at home, as there may be occasions on the boat
or settings without wildlife where you might find it useful.
Dry bags can
be handy, especially if your current camera bag doesn't have some
type of rain-cover. Our LowePro
PhotoTrekker & NatureTrekker AW (all-weather) backpacks do have
this, but we did bring a large dry bag just in case for the wet
landings. We didn't use it once! Getting in and out of an inflatable
boat, and making wet landings certainly can create risk of dunking
your gear, however, it was very easy to be careful enough to avoid
that. Your bags can be handed to someone else in getting on and
off the boat. The trips to and from the main boat were usually in
calm waters, keeping splashing to a minimum. The Dry bag is just
going to add more weight, and be one extra thing to carry around
on the island with you. A small one might be fine, but don't bother
with the larger variety. We found the rain-covers built into our
LowePro packs to work just fine, otherwise a few garbage bags can
do equally as well as splash guards.
In summary,
our most used lenses on land for this trip were a Tokina 20-35 f2.8
ATX wide angle zoom and the Nikon 80-400 VR lens. These 2 lenses
were used for 90% of the photographic situations we encountered.
We found ourselves bringing a backpack of gear early on in the trip,
and only a shoulder bag with these 2 lenses from the mid-point on.
If we did have more time, we would have like to use our 105 f2.8
macro lenses for the many varieties of flowers and plant life.
