Let’s face it, very little beats being on a safari in Africa…
… surrounding oneself with so much natural beauty from the endless landscapes to the myriad of creatures, both great and small. For many, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we all wish to have some memories of these experiences captured so that we can relive them whenever we look back on the unforgettable time.
When I started by guiding career all those years ago, the sound of clicking camera shutters and noisy zoom lenses of point-and-shoot cameras was part and parcel of the safari experience. Now, if I hear that sound I almost get whiplash as I turn around to see an “old school” camera in action! These cameras are rarer than cheetahs for me – and with my cheetah luck, that is saying a lot!
A rare sight these days – guests using old-style long-lens cameras while an elephant family approaches.
The reason for the change is not that people are not interested in capturing their safari memories anymore – quite the opposite in fact – but rather that the devices on which we do so have changed remarkably over the past two decades. So much so that where, in the past, only one family member had a camera handy, now every tourist on my game drives is taking some photos or videos of all the animals we see.
When I think back to when this change started happening, I have to chuckle at a memory of one of my old trackers sitting on the tracker seat, not watching the lions, but rather one of the guests taking photos of the lions. With a quizzical look, he turned to me and asked “is that lady trying to take a photo with a book?”. The book, of course, was a brand new invention called an iPad.
These “books” that were once rare – and large – have now been replaced by the incessantly improving iterations of something that is quite inseparable from us. Our iPhones (and my apologies to Android users for simplifying the idea of a smartphone to one brand). It fits in our pockets, doesn’t make a noise (well, at least not when taking photos), has great image quality, and based on the latest iPhone 17 specs, now even has the zoom capable of getting good wildlife images! Smartphones are moving away from phones that take photos to cameras that have the ability to make phone calls (and for the younger readers, that is when you use the device to have a real-time, verbal conversation with another person).
A guest takes a wildlife photo with an iPhone as an elephant feeds nearby.
As iPhones have now become the main medium with which the majority of guests visiting Tanda Tula use to capture their memories, we thought it would be a good idea to give you some pointers before you come on safari, so that you can make the most of your iPhone to capture some wonderful memories of your time on safari!
So here are ten tips for capturing better memories with your iPhone!
Before we get to these tips, it is worth setting the bar of expectations of what images we can capture. There are a great deal of positives about iPhones: convenience, size, high resolution, good processing to capture a high dynamic range (huh? Basically, the range of tones from pure black to pure white – the higher the dynamic range, the more closely the images match what our eyes see in terms of balancing light and dark areas), and being able to capture long exposures whilst hand holding the phone.
A classic high dynamic range moment where bright sky and deep shadow meet in one frame.
The negatives are that in low light, the images are very noisy (again, huh? Noise is the digital equivalent of grain – in low light, the images are very grainy) due to cameras small sensor. However, the biggest issue – especially for capturing wildlife – is the lack of zoom capability of a phone. This is especially true for older phones, but is becoming less of an issue with each subsequent model. If you have an older phone and are considering an upgrade, maybe consider doing it before coming on your next safari – the latest iPhone’s (17 Max Pro) have an 8x optical zoom – enough to get the same frame-filling images that a somewhat bulky 200mm lens would give (yet still fit into your pocket)! Okay, before I get another “huh?”, lets chat a bit more about how to get more out of your iPhone when on safari!
TIPS TO USE WHEN SHOOTING WILDLIFE WITH AN IPHONE
1. iPhonography is still photography
Whilst you might still consider your iPhone as just that, a phone, when using it to take images, the same basic principles of photography apply to your images. This means that light, composition, exposure and editing are all going to play an import part in getting a great final image.
Light
Any subject (including your partner!) is going to look better in great light! Your guide will know how to position for the best use of light, and when they do so, be sure to use that early morning and late afternoon light to your advantage! In these so-called ‘golden hours’ (the first and last hour of light each day), the light is richer and the colours become so much more vibrant, giving your images some extra punch! This is not to say you shouldn’t take photos at other times of the day, but maximise your opportunities when the light is good.
Composition
This refers to how one places the main points of interests within the frame of the photograph. My adage has always been “anywhere but the centre will do”. So often I have had guests show me their photos and seen that the animals are always slap bang in the middle – this is a dead spot of most compositions, and shifting the subject off centre can greatly improve the feeling and flow of energy within an image. One of the easiest ways of achieving this is by making use of the rule of thirds. This is where the image is divided into thirds on both a horizontal and vertical basis; where these lines intersect are known as the power points, and one of the better spots to place a subject when composing an image. To turn on lines of thirds on your iPhone, go to Settings > Camera and toggle the Grid option to on. This will add a 3×3 grid to your Camera app to assist you with composition.
An iPhone locks onto a hippo in glowing sunset water, showing how easily mobile cameras capture striking moments.
When deciding on which power point to use, always try and give the subject space to move into, or look into. Thus, if the subject is looking to the left, rather place it closer to the right hand side line-of-thirds, as this gives it more space to “look into”.
Placing your subject so it looks into open space creates a more natural visual flow.
As a general rule, I also usually try and place the subject as close to the bottom of the frame as possible, giving more space to the background than the foreground. As a result, I will usually put the subject at one of the power points on the bottom line of thirds.
They do however say that rules are made to be broken – so don’t get too stuck in the mindset of only shooting according the rule of thirds, but use the principle as a way of thinking more about your compositions.
Exposure
Discussions of exposure are usually those parts of photographic courses that put people to sleep! When using cameras with manual or semi-automatic exposure, you can control how much light the camera captures (i.e., the exposure) but altering the aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Huh? Luckily, your iPhone does all this thinking for you, and in fact, you cannot make adjustments to these settings, so you don’t even need to worry about them! Sometimes though, your iPhone might determine what it thinks is the “correct” exposure (brightness of the image), but you would prefer it to be either lighter or darker than the camera has made it – this is one aspect you do have the opportunity to change.
To adjust the exposure of the image, all one needs to do is to touch and hold the iPhone’s screen on the subject. A little yellow square will appear, and after a second or two will flash big-and-small, and once it has done that, it means the exposure is locked on that spot you touched. You will know it has worked, as the words AF/AE Lock will appear at the top of the screen, and to confirm this, you can more the camera around, and the exposure/brightness will not change – it is locked.
Press and hold on your subject to lock the exposure before taking the shot.
With AE/AF Lock enabled, your exposure and focus stay fixed on the subject.
If you wish to make the image brighter, touch the yellow square (or even to the right of it) and slide upwards. A little line with the sun will appear, and the higher up your move, the brighter the image will become.
Sliding upward on the exposure bar increases brightness for clearer detail.
If you wish to make the image darker, once again touch and lock the exposure on the subject, but this time slide down, and as you do so, the image will become darker!
Sliding downward on the exposure bar reduces brightness for a richer, moodier look.
Editing
Just like every digital camera image you see on social media and in magazines has been edited to give the image some extra “pop”, you too should be looking at editing your photos. This doesn’t require a subscription to Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop (although, you can edit iPhone photos just like any other image in this software suite), but can be done on the phone itself. Editing options include adjusting exposure and brightness to make the entire image brighter or darker, or you can play with just the shadows (dark areas) and highlights (bright areas) on their own, implementing changes in only the desired area, and not the whole image.
“Brilliance” just sounds like a great tool, and it is! A simple adjustment of this will make a photo look richer and more vibrant by brightening dark areas, adding contrast, and bringing out highlights to reveal hidden details. It’s a more subtle and nuanced adjustment than the main “Exposure” tool, as it balances light and dark areas without over-brightening or losing detail in the highlights. In addition, it is colour-neutral, so whilst it affects contrast and brightness, it doesn’t affect the saturation of the colours, and therefore retails a natural look and feel to the image.
The original lion image before any editing adjustments are applied.
Increasing Brilliance lifts shadows, balances highlights, and reveals hidden detail.
In terms of colours, my preference is to make adjustments to “vibrancy” as opposed to saturation. This is because vibrancy selectively boosts the intensity and enhances muted colours and protects already saturated colours (especially skin tones), whereas saturation boosts all colours equally, often leading to very unnatural looking colours.
A Vibrancy adjustment set to 70 lifts muted tones while keeping colours natural.
Using Saturation at 70 shows how quickly colours become exaggerated and unrealistic.
A last set of colour adjustments to be made are the warmth and tint of the image. Warmth of an image refers to how much of a yellow/orange cast the images have. Adjusting this can make images taken on dull, cloudy days feel warmer and more appealing, and less cold and blue. Tint affects colours on the green-magenta scale, and can be used for correcting colours of images taken during the lush summer months where the iPhone incorrectly tries to balance the very green scenes of summer by adding a hint of magenta to the image. Normally, these adjustments are welcome, but sometimes is actually changes the tint of the image that then needs to be corrected.
You can also give the image a bit more clarity and detail by adjusting the sharpness and definition. This is not a magic tool to un-blur a photo, but rather a way of extracting more detail. Sharpness increases contrast around the edges of the subject, whilst definition adds detail over a broader area and decreases haziness of the image, especially in the background.
Lastly, I always enjoy adding a touch of vignette to the photo to help draw the viewers eyes deeper into the photo.
A fully edited lion portrait showing balanced light, detail, and natural colour.
So edit away and enjoy making your images come to life – but just be careful not to overdo it!
2. Stay Away from Digital Zoom
When you are zooming in to get closer to the animals, be careful not to zoom in too far. This is because most of the iPhone’s zoom is coming from digitally zooming in to what the optical lens is capturing. Essentially, it is like us “pinching out” to zoom in closer to an image in our photo gallery. It isn’t optically making it bigger, we are just zooming in to the pixels already captured. The result is that the images become very grainy and lose a great deal of quality. You are better sticking to the phone’s minimum optical zoom and cropping closer afterwards than zooming in too much. Due to this, it is recommended to use your iPhone’s optical zoom range (e.g., the 0.5x, 1x, 3x, or 5x lens options) for the best quality, and if you need a closer shot but are past the optical limit, take the picture using the maximum optical zoom available, and then crop in post-processing later superior results. Digital zoom should be considered a last resort for casual, non-critical shots where convenience is more important than quality.
Digital zoom reduces clarity and introduces grain, especially when cropped.
Optical zoom maintains far better detail and clarity, even when cropped.
3. Rather Video in Low Light
With wildlife, we often find that some of the best action happens when the sun has set and the light is low. iPhone’s really struggle with low light, especially if the subject is moving. Although it might activate the night mode when the light is low, these 1 to 3 second long exposures will never result in a good quality image of any animals on the move. The best option in such a scenario is to rather switch the phone to video mode and film the action as a short video clip as opposed to a photo – the results will be the capturing of a far better memory than getting frustrated trying to snap a shot in low light.
In low light, switching to video captures movement and detail far better than a long-exposure photo.
4. Live in the Moment – Don’t be afraid to put your iPhone down
This should actually be a general rule, and probably the first discussed with any photography related talk – don’t forget to live in the moment, and enjoy and appreciate the wildlife and moments you are witnessing with your own eyes.
As with all photography, there comes a point where the conditions are simply beyond the capabilities of even the most advanced cameras, and no matter what you try, you will not get a shot. In these moments, the best advice would be to put the iPhone down, and rather capture the memories with your mind. Pick up your binoculars, and view the animal with your own eyes as opposed to watching on a screen that isn’t going to capture anything anyway.
Some sightings deserve to be experienced first, photographed second.
5. Shoot for the Stars
One of my most memorable iPhone moments was sitting watching the stars with guests one evening when one of them leaned over and showed me an image of the stars that he had just taken. On his iPhone. Handheld. If I wanted to get anything even close to that with my camera, what a mission it was! Tripods, blind focusing, remote triggers, stumbling around in the dark, and generally a load of disappointment. Now, one could simply point one’s iPhone at the stars for 10 seconds and get images photographers could only dream about a decade or two ago!
So, how to take photos of the stars? Here it is in 10 easy steps.
- Find some stars. Surely with a few thousand flickering above our heads it can’t be that difficult? As long as there are no clouds and no moon, this should be possible!
- Open up the Camera app, and choose Photo set to 1x zoom (this is because this lens uses the best sensor, and gives the highest quality image)
- In the top-centre of the screen is a little down arrow – touch this to bring up a menu on the bottom of the screen.
- There is a symbol of a moon (a waning gibbous moon to be exact) – touch this to bring up a slider.
- Slide this slider until it says Max (10s); this means a 10 second exposure.
- Point the camera at the most abundantly illuminated cluster of stars in the sky above you.
- Touch on the screen to focus on the stars
- Push the photo button – this will start a 10 second exposure with the words “hold still” written on the screen.
- Hold still. There is a cross hair that pops up if you start moving too much. It is best if you can rest your hands/iPhone on the armrest or roll bars on the seat in front of you for extra stability.
- Enjoy the wonders of technology, capturing the wonders of the night sky! Don’t be too alarmed if the image and stars don’t look too bright, they will appear more impressive when the screens brightness is turned up again when you are back in camp!
6. Make Your Subject Stand out
We have all seen those stunning wildlife images where the animal just seems to jump out of the image – this is achieved by using cameras with wide apertures that not only allow a great deal of light in, but have the added advantage of creating a shallow depth of field (a very small band of the scene is in focus) which gives rise to those soft, smooth backgrounds. If set against this clean background, your subject will really stand out. This is all well and good if you have a massive telephoto lens with you on safari, but not so easy to achieve with an iPhone in your pocket. Even though the latest iPhone 17 Pro Max offers the equivalent of a 200mm f/2.8 lens. You’re entitled to another “huh?” moment! The f/2.8 is the aperture, and to avoid any confusing digressions, let’s just state that this is a wide aperture, and fully capable of giving you a silky smooth background on a more typical camera. The problem is, even with an aperture of f/2.8, the small sensor of the iPhone does not allow for a particularly shallow depth of field, meaning that you get good detail throughout the scene. This is not a bad thing for most photos, but it is not going to help if you want your subject to stand out from the background.
A clean, natural image taken using the standard Photo mode.
Enter Portrait mode. While far from perfect, what portrait mode emulating is the effect of this shallow depth of field. In fact, if you open up a photo taken in portrait mode, you have the ability to change the “aperture” of the shot, and thereby affecting how much of the background is in focus! The smaller the “f/number”, the shallower the depth of field. Play around with the slider to see how an image’s background becomes more or less blurry as the aperture changes.
Portrait mode at f/4.0 keeps the subject sharp while softening the background naturally.
A wider aperture creates a much stronger blur, isolating the subject completely.
Now, what your iPhone is doing is not actually changing the aperture that the image was shot at, but rather cleverly detecting the subject, and blurry all of the background elements to create the illusion of affecting the aperture – it is ultimately all a digital effect. In addition to changing this, you can also change the point of focus, and this will direct the phone to blur different components of the image.
Whilst not always perfect, if the subject is isolated and somewhat separated from the background, portrait mode can be a great way of creating an image where your subject really stands out.
7. Capture the Bigger Picture using Perspective
One aspect I often miss out on when photographing with my large camera and lens is that it doesn’t show perspective of how close one gets to animals whilst on safari, as there is no perspective. This is one area where having the wide angle lenses available on your phone are really handy. Zoom out, include some of the vehicle and give perspective to the scene your are capturing to better portray what it is like to be on a safari!
The ultra-wide angle lens (the 0.5x zoom) is also wonderfully handy for capturing landscapes and trees to give a wide-angle perspective that shows a greater field of view than even out eyes see, and when we can capture more than the eye can see, it always makes for more arresting images as it is a view we are not always used to seeing!
A striking portrait of a leopard lounging high in the branches, beautifully lit by the late-afternoon sun.
A reminder to zoom out. Sometimes the environment tells the story just as powerfully as the wildlife.
A wide view that shows just how comfortably wildlife moves around a safari vehicle.
We need to be very careful when zooming out to capture landscape scenes that we keep our horizon line straight – this is not always the easiest. Fortunately, your iPhone will automatically sense when you are pointing the phone towards a horizon and bring up a digital spirit level that will show you which way you need to rotate the photo to level it out. When the line is straight, it goes yellow and you are good to go! If you get it wrong, you can always go and correct it in the editing afterwards by rotating the image slightly.
When the horizon is off, the spirit level line appears to help you straighten the shot.
Rotate your phone until the line turns yellow for a perfectly level horizon.
8. Need an even Wider View? Don’t forget about Pano mode!
Occasionally we are presented with scenes of vast vistas, or large herds of animals that not even the 0.5x lens can capture – after all, when zooming out that much, the subjects do become very small and difficult to see if they are any distance away. One way of getting around this is to make use of iPhone’s very hand panoramic mode. Much like the star images, getting panoramic photos with a digital camera is a troublesome process that requires one to lock the exposure and focus, and make sure you are grabbing the images with enough overlap, and then you need to stitch it together on the computer afterwards, only to see that your horizon is skew. Frustrating and time-consuming. Not with a smartphone. Now you just literally point and shoot…well, almost.
A pano captures the full sweep of a sky like this — colour, drama, and the reflection below.
Put the camera in Pano mode, and an arrow appears on screen facing to the right. This set up allows you to move slowly from left to right, keeping the arrow level with the line so you don’t end up with a skew horizon (don’t worry, the phone will let you know if you are going skew, or moving too fast). Press the photo button to begin, and as you move along, the camera is constantly capturing images and adding them to the pano shot – when you are done, push the photo button again to stop.
Follow the on-screen arrow and move your iPhone smoothly to capture a seamless pano.
If you wish to rather do the pano from right to left, simply touch the arrow and it will flip the direction around and allow you to move the other way.
Tap the arrow to flip your starting point. Here the arrow points left, so begin on the right and sweep your phone to the left.
One last very important note is to remember to lock the exposure before beginning to pano. If you don’t, as you move across a scene (such as a sunset), the camera will constantly change the exposure as you more from left to right (or right to left – your choice!), and if the light changes in the scene being photographed, the panorama will have an uneven and very noticeable graduated exposure across the image. Rather point at main focal point of the scene (even if it is not the pano’s starting point) and press and hold your finger on the screen to lock the exposure (but you remember how to do that from earlier, don’t you!). With the exposure (brightness) for that part of the scene locked, you can now go to the beginning scene of the panorama and touch the photo button to begin taking the pano. As you move across the scene, even if the light and brightness of the actual scene changes, because you locked the exposure, the phone will not attempt to change it, and you will have a uniform exposure across the whole scene – simple!
When exposure is not locked during a panorama, the iPhone adapts to shifting light and creates bands of graduated brightness across the sky. A simple reminder to tap and hold before you start the sweep.
9. Get in close with Macro
While showing the bigger picture is always a welcome change, there is a whole other world of opportunity if we go right in! Now, I don’t want you to try this on a lions nose, but if you are wondering around on a bush walk, or even during a coffee stop on drive, grab your iPhone and go and look for nature’s finer details with your phones macro functions.
Getting down to ground level gives your photos a far more intimate perspective. Drop low, stay steady, and let the story unfold right in front of your lens.
Macro photography is a typically challenging form of photography, especially when it comes to lighting, and with an iPhone it is no different – so be careful how you position yourself so that you don’t block out all of the light. With some light on the subject, hold the camera right up to whatever small object you wish to capture – a flower, the texture of a tree, a small insect – and the iPhone will automatically change to Macro mode and allow you to focus extremely closely – 20mm or 0.8” – and capture a world we cannot see with out naked eyes. It is not always about the big stuff out there!
Macro mode reveals a whole new world. Up close, the humble dung beetle becomes a tiny titan with incredible detail and texture brought to life through the iPhone’s macro lens.
Pro tip – if photographing something small on the ground – hold the phone upside down, as this will bring the iPhone’s lenses even closer to ground level and make it look like you are on the same level as the subject, making the image more intimate!
10. Speed up Time
One last setting to play with on you iPhone is the Time Lapse. What the phone does in this mode is capture two frames per second (fps), and then plays them back at 30fps. This means that 15 seconds of reality is played back in 1 second on the video. A five minute time lapse will give you a 20 second video of what unfolded in front of you. This is great for filming the changes of light at sunrises and sunsets, clouds rolling over the landscape, or even a herd of buffalo approaching a waterhole to drink. The biggest issue with capturing time lapses is that the camera needs to stay still and steady, so a small tripod/gorillapod is a must. It also requires patience and planning. Compose the scene, and make sure you will be able to sit still for at least five to ten minutes – and not be tempted to pick up the phone to grab another photo or video during that time! If you do sit it out, it can make for some great results!
11. It’s not about the photos
Lastly, this is to reiterate an earlier point – being on safari is not about the photos, but about the experiences. Yes, having great photos and videos will allow us to relive the memories of the safari, but this should never come at the expense of spending so much time taking photos that we never actually get to live in the moment and enjoy the safari with our own eyes, ears and other senses.
A gentle reminder to lift your eyes from the screen now and then. Some moments in the Timbavati deserve to be felt before they are photographed.
So, grab you photos, take your videos and capture those moments, but also be sure to put the camera down and just enjoying being in the middle of these extraordinarily ancient landscapes with all their inhabitants.
I do hope that this has better prepared you for your next safari adventure, and once you have captured those special moments and shared them on social media, be sure to tag Tanda Tula so that we too can relive the magical memories that you captured!
Until next time!
Cheers
Chad
