Zambia is a foreign country: they do things differently there…

When people ask if I photograph birds, I say I do—if there aren’t any animals around…! That’s not quite fair, though, and I enjoyed seeing birds of prey and the colourful beauty of rollers, kingfishers and bee-eaters around Chikunto Safari Lodge in South Luangwa National Park.

When I spent a couple of days there, it was my first safari in Zambia, and I didn’t quite know what to expect. I was hoping for leopards and wild dogs, but there were very few around, so I had to spend most of my time with the local birds.

Fortunately, there are over 800 different bird species in Zambia, and I saw 49 of them, including lilac-breasted rollers, little bee-eaters and white-fronted bee-eaters—three of my favourites. When they took off, I had a great chance to try out pre-release capture for the first time with my new Nikon Z8 and NIKKOR Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S lens.

The Lodge

My original plan was to visit Mfuwe Lodge, which had the reputation of being a good place to see both cats and dogs. I suggested my usual barter deal of wildlife pictures in exchange for free accommodation, but when that didn’t work out, I decided to go ahead and pay to stay there for two weeks.

When I’d already booked my flights and accommodation, I received a message from Gareth at Chikunto, inviting me to spend a couple of days there (at a discounted rate). I’d previously asked about becoming a resident photographer in 2020, but this was a new proposal. Gareth wanted to know if I’d be interested in a fact-finding mission before leading tour groups to Chikunto in 2025 and beyond.

It was certainly something I wanted to look into, and Chikunto was only a few miles away from Mfuwe. I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I brought forward my outward flight to Mfuwe via Dubai and Lusaka and agreed to meet one of the directors out there.

The journey was fairly uneventful until the final leg. The BAe Jetstream 41 was only a 30-seater and had no overhead lockers, so a Proflight steward tried to make me put my camera bag in the hold. That was never going to happen, and when I made a fuss, he relented. In Africa, there’s always a solution…

We touched down at 1745 on 19 July 2024, 23 hours after I’d left home! There was no security at the airport, so after a quick stop to ‘check the tyres’, I walked straight out with Manny, my guide, and Mwansa, the ops manager. I had a bottle of the local Mosi beer and watched the world go by. I’ve never seen so many cyclists on the road in Africa…

The journey back to the lodge took around two hours. That included a night drive through South Luangwa National Park, where we saw a large spotted genet and an elephant shrew. It was the first time I’d ever seen either of those, so I added them to my life list.

When we eventually arrived at the lodge, I had a quick chat with Mwansa, who introduced me to Jens, the director. I was then approached by a nice lady called Grace, who gave me a complimentary foot massage!

The lodge itself was a boutique property looking out over the Luangwa River. There were five luxury tented suites and two guide rooms, all connected to the main area by wooden walkways (due to the seasonal flooding).

The design ethic was clean and minimalist, so there were no African masks on the walls or local knick-knacks on display everywhere. That suited me fine. The only slight disappointment was the hide. I’d been looking forward to spending a few hours in it, but it was pretty basic, and there was no wildlife to photograph.

When I was shown to my room, it was nice and warm, and there was also a hot water bottle in my bed. It was then that I realised I’d forgotten my toothpaste and a spare shirt. It was the second time in a row that I’d forgotten something important—despite having used my packing list. And I didn’t even have the excuse of having drunk too much champagne at my birthday party…!

Fortunately, somebody was able to rustle up a ‘dental kit’, which was waiting for me when I got back from the morning game drive.

Daily Routine

I was only at Chikunto for a couple of days, but I still had time for the usual morning and evening game drives. The daily routine was broadly what I had expected:

• 0530 Wake-up

• 0545 Walk to main area for fruit juice

• 0600-1130 Morning game drive (and second breakfast!) with Manny in his Land Rover

• 1230-1330 Lunch in the main area (with Jens and/or Sheldon, a mechanical engineer)

• 1530-1545 High tea in the main area

• 1545-1845 Afternoon game drive with Manny

• 1900-2000 Dinner in the main area (which I didn’t have on the second night)

The highlight was the food. I was given breakfast, second breakfast, brunch, high tea and dinner. Even Sam Gamgee from Lord of the Rings would’ve been happy with that! There must be an alarm system in safari lodges that goes off whenever a guest goes for more than half an hour without food or drink…

At most places in Africa, you get a buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but Chikunto was different. We were served all our courses at the table, and the food came in proper dishes, from which we could serve ourselves.

Some of the items on the menu were familiar, such as the chicken drumsticks. However, they came with an apricot sauce with whole cranberries—which showed that the chef had at least put a bit of thought into his creations! I also liked the fact that I wasn’t offered hand sanitiser every time I sat down to eat…

I enjoyed meeting Jens and Sheldon, and we had a good chat at lunchtime. Jens didn’t think my idea of running a specialist wildlife photography tour would work. On the other hand, he did say that Pangolin Photo Safaris had recently started replacing all their full-time instructors with freelancers, so there might be a job for me after all!

Wildlife photography

My guide, Manny, was good company, and we had a laugh together. We also had a spotter for the afternoon game drive called Eto’o (like the footballer). The only time things went wrong was when Manny saw a southern ground hornbill in the woods. When I asked where it was, he said, “You see that tree…?” Not very helpful…!

There were no cheetahs, rhinos or sable antelopes in South Luangwa National Park, and the lion pride that used to take down buffaloes had been reduced from 25 to 15 members. That made it tricky to find animals to photograph.

We did see the Mfuwe pride of lions sleeping in the bushes, a couple of male lions lying by the river (see Going for Gold and Sphinx above) and a female leopard (‘Chipazuba’, or Something that is Beautiful’) that posed beautifully for us out in the open. However, those were the exceptions that proved the rule.

Most of the time, I had to focus on the birds. We saw a rare crested eagle and plenty of brown-hooded kingfishers, little bee-eaters and Lilian’s lovebirds, so there was plenty to keep me busy. There were probably even more lilac-breasted rollers than in Botswana—which is saying something!

From a photographic point of view, the significance of this trip was that it was the first time I’d been able to use my new camera. A few weeks earlier, I’d traded in one of my Sony ⍺1s, my 12-24mm, 400mm and 600mm lenses and various accessories for a brand new Nikon Z8 and a 600mm lens.

I lost a lot of money on the deal, but it was the only way to benefit from what I saw as two key advantages:

• The Z8 had pre-release capture.

• The 600mm lens had a built-in 1.4x teleconverter.

Pre-release Capture

Pre-release capture is a feature on the Z8 that lets you buffer images while you half-press the shutter or use back button focus. As soon as you fully press the shutter to take a burst, the camera writes the buffered images to the memory card, giving you an extra second at 30, 60 or even 120 fps.

This is absolutely crucial for bird-in-flight photography. You no longer need to rely on the speed of your reactions to take pictures of birds taking off. Instead, you have a whole extra second to press the shutter, which means you’re pretty much guaranteed to get those crucial frames when the bird lifts its wings to take off and its feet are just touching the branch.

Here are a few examples—all taken in bird detection mode at 30 fps and at either 1/3200 or 1/4000 of a second…

It was great fun playing with pre-release capture, and it meant that I never had any of those awful moments when I was distracted or didn’t press the shutter in time. It really is a game-changer, and I look forward to using it for all kinds of action shots in future.

On the other hand, I should point out that there are a couple of flaws. First of all, it only works in JPEG mode. That means you can’t shoot in Raw, which limits your post-processing options and reduces image quality due to the compression algorithm. There’s a rumour that Nikon will introduce Raw support in the next firmware update (to match what’s possible on the Z9), but we’ll have to wait and see.

Another related problem is that the compression gets steadily worse as you increase the frame rate. Through trial and error, I found out I shouldn’t have been using the 60 or 120 fps pre-capture settings as the pixel count was too low. At 30 fps, the JPEG image is taken from the whole frame and therefore contains 45.7 MP. However, at 60 fps, the camera only produces a 19 MP image, and at 120 fps, it’s only 11 MP.

Overheating is also an issue, especially in bright sunshine. My Z8 started misbehaving at one point when a lilac-breasted roller refused to take off—but I got a pretty good shot in the end.

Almost every time I used pre-release capture, I ended up getting an amber or red warning in the viewfinder for a ‘hot card’. The problem was that the camera was having to work too hard at focusing and buffering images to avoid the steady build-up of heat. That wasn’t ideal.

Finally, there was a lack of customisation options. It was not a straightforward process to engage pre-release capture. Whenever I switched from shooting animals to birds, I had to take three separate steps (and, of course, do the same in reverse afterwards):

• Change frame rate to 30 fps (by pressing the dedicated button on the left side of the top plate and turning the rear dial)

• Switch to bird detection (by pressing the ‘i’ button on the back of the camera and turning the front dial)

• Change the shutter speed to 1/3200 of a second or more (by turning the rear dial).

Unlike my Sony ⍺1, the Nikon Z8 didn’t give me the option of setting up a preset to add to the command dial. That would’ve allowed me to change all the settings in one go. Instead, there were memory banks, but they were more like ‘bookmarks’ than presets, and, crucially, they didn’t let me revert to my default settings. Instead, the camera would simply keep the most recent values.

It was also impossible to program a custom button to control the frame rate or the subject detection mode. Yes, there was an auto option, but that simply wasn’t reliable enough.

That lack of a one-touch solution to engaging pre-release capture was a real problem sometimes. I knew that it would take at least 10 seconds to change all the settings from portrait to action mode, so I often ‘made do’ with JPEG rather than Raw portraits, ended up with blurred action shots as the shutter speed wasn’t high enough or failed to activate pre-release capture as I was still shooting Raw at 20 fps!

Built-in Teleconverter

The other feature I was keen to try out on this trip was the built-in teleconverter in my new 600mm lens. Again, this is a real game-changer for me. In the past, I’d had to lug around my 400mm and 600mm lenses in separate bags as both wouldn’t fit in my camera case. Since buying the Nikon 600mm, that was the only telephoto I needed. It was one lens to rule them all…!

I should also point out that 600mm was the longest focal length possible in the Sony range (without using an external teleconverter). The 1.4x built-in teleconverter in the NIKKOR lens let me switch effortlessly between 600mm (12x magnification) and 840mm (nearly 17x).

To activate it, I had to use the middle finger of my right hand to reach for the lever on the right-hand side of the barrel of the lens. It was a bit awkward, and it took a little getting used to at first. It was also easy to forget which focal length I was using—even though there was a ‘TC’ icon in the EVF to tell me when the teleconverter was engaged.

However, once I got the hang of it, it came in very handy. It gave me the extra reach I’d been missing since I’d sold my old Nikon 800mm lens, and it was especially helpful for bird photography given the smaller size of my subjects.

Verdict

Overall, I enjoyed my stay at Chikunto. It was a luxurious lodge with great food and very friendly and helpful staff. I had lots of bird sightings, and I got a chance to field test my new Z8 and 600mm lens, which worked pretty well.

It’s a shame I could only stay for a couple of nights, but maybe I’ll find a few guests gullible enough to come with me on safari next year…!

Species

Animals

African bush elephant 

Banded mongoose 

Crawshay or Burchell’s zebra 

Cape buffalo 

Common warthog

Common waterbuck

Elephant shrew

Greater kudu 

Hippo

Impala

Large spotted genet

Leopard 

Lion

Nike crocodile

Puku

Scrub hare

Spotted hyena

Thornycroft’s giraffe

Tree squirrel 

Vervet monkey 

Yellow baboon

Birds

African fish eagle 

African jacana 

African openbill

African spoonbill 

Black-headed heron

Blue waxbill

Brown-hooded kingfisher 

Brown snake eagle

Common stonechat 

Crested eagle

Egyptian goose 

Emerald-spotted wood dove

Fork-tailed drongo

Great egret

Greater blue-eared starling

Green-backed wood hoopoe

Green pigeon 

Grey hornbill 

Hadada ibis

Hamerkop

Helmeted guineafowl 

Hooded vulture

Lilac-breasted roller 

Lilian’s lovebird

Little bee-eater 

Lizard buzzard

Magpie shrike

Malachite kingfisher 

Marabou stork 

Meves’s starling

Namaqua dove

Pied kingfisher 

Red-billed hornbill

Red-billed quelea

Red-necked spurfowl

Ring-necked dove 

Sacred ibis 

Saddle-billed stork

Southern ground hornbill 

Swainson’s spurfowl

Water thick-knee

Wattled lapwing

Western banded snake-eagle

White-browed coucal

White-browed robin-chat

White-crowned lapwing

White-fronted bee-eater

Wire-tailed swallow 

Yellow-billed stork 

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