SLR's

[Kari Eloranta <kve@dopey.hut.fi>]

Alastair,

Without commenting much on the AF, let me say the following as
you mention going to Africa.

In general it is a bad idea to get a new system for the "once of
a lifetime"-trip it is for many people. Getting used to a body
takes time and to a system it takes even more time. And all that
time should be _before_ the trip. In particular the fauna, ceremony
etc. shots requires that you have no hesitation whatsoever about
the basic controls of your camera.

But if you do it that way the second point is to pay attention to
the reliability and service of the gear. Dust is all over and
it eats the cameras. You have to decide how often they (lenses
and bodies) are in plastic bags. The more you care about photography 
the less you end up protecting your gear i.e the are not in their
bags but are exposed to the grit, rain etc. 

Chances are that none will be able to fix your gear even in major
centers like Addis, Nairobi or Dar es Salaam, someone might be able
to help you in South Africa. But even then do you want to waste time
on having your gear in a shop? Have at least two bodies. Equally
important is to buy brand that you have a chance of finding there in
any numbers in shops or used by fellow shooters (you might be able to
swap gear for a day or two, a useful thing). That pretty much narrows
it down to Canon and Nikon. (The Leica-content of this post being the
sobering observation that if you use it there you better have all your
essential items, bodies, lenses etc. in at least duplicate...)

I've been several times in various parts of the continent. I'm mostly
interested in people and at most one of my lenses is in the 200-300mm
category. Often I skip it altogether (Actually - once I realized this
the M-Leica became first a viable option then reality :-) ). My SLR
gear is MF and I'm quite convinced that no AF gear could possibly
outlive it it under those conditions. Nor could it outperform mine.
But I do admit that wild-life shooting is a different game and many
do then prefer AF (altough Lanting doesn't - ah, see that sublime NG
special by him on Okavango delta a few years ago!). 

Regards,


Kari Eloranta