Heading to Africa (Botswana and Zambia) for a few weeks and debating what to take for a photography kit. I have an A7R and a number of FE lenses, including70-200 FE zoom. The drawback to the A7R is that the autofocus performance is just "ok." I was thinking of renting an A7II or A7S. The A7II apparently has much better autofocus than the A7R; the A7S has superb low light capabilities, which worked wonderfully for me on a trip to India last Fall in difficult lighting conditions, and I will be out early in the morning and late afternoon and even into the night in Africa. I could take the A7R as a backup and keep my 24-70 FE zoom on it. I am also thinking of leaving the 70-200 FE zoom at home and renting an A mount long zoom with an adapter. A Sony 70-400 zoom, a Sigma 50-500 zoom or a Tamron 150-600 zoom. I may be wrong about the need for such a long lens as I am staying at camps where the safari dirves can go offroad. I also don't know how well such a long lens will work off a tripod. I am hoping that a beanbag setup will work in the safari vehicles.
TIA for any advice. The advice I got last Fall here recommending the A7s for India was excellent. (A portfolio of my photographs from India is now up on my website.)
I was in South Africa in May this year and last October too. I was in Tanzania two years ago and on all these trips I did take a Nex-7 (Tanzania) and the A7R (S. Africa). We did a brief drive one afternoon in Zambia in the park in Victoria Falls last yr and I used the A7R there too.
The most important determinant of your needs is really your wants.
If you are into animal portraits or close-ups of any kind, then you will need at least 400mm on the long end. You can get away with a 70-200mm lens for many animal in the 'habitat' shots but just about. Anything less than 70mm will mainly be wide-angle with the animal being particularly small in the frame. You certainly cannot do any good bird shots in less than 200mm, unless the bird is sitting 6 feet from you on a bush which is very unlikely.
I found that with the A7R, focus is critical since the sensor is high resolution. There may also have been some 'shutter shake' although I am not entirely convinced that it is a major issue. Nevertheless, I found that even with the 55 1.8 (my fastest and sharpest Sony lens), the focus and sharpness was often missing when the animals were moving about. And of course it was too short for most images where I wanted to isolate a single animal from a group.
I tried using the Canon 70-200 f4 with the metabones adapter and it was terrible at getting the focus with moving animals. I did not have the Sony 70-200 so cannot say how much better it would be.
I don't think low light capabilites of the A7R are a major concern, since it definitely does better than any of my Canon DSLRs.
My suggestion would be to take a DSLR (rent it if you like) with a 70-200 and/or a 100-400 on it (preferably the latter). Use that as your main camera and it does not have to be too bulky.
Have the A7R as a second camera to supplement the DSLR. It is highly capable and in some situations will work wonderfully well. For example, late in the day, around sunset, there were no animals around and we were driving to a sighting some distance away. The sun was at the horizon and slowly going down. I kept the 16-35 f4 lens on the A7R at 16mm, shutter speed at 1/500, f11, ISO 400 and just kept it pointed at the horizon while shooting at the trees that we were going past. The vehicle was bumping and the roads as we all know are full of potholes. Still, the images were very interesting (to me) and beautiful.
Sometimes you just want to take a shot of the animal on the horizon and then crop it out if needed.
Here are a few shots to illustrate.
The first one is two tigers that were at least 100 feet away, taken with the 7D2 and the 100-400L MkII lens, at 188mm, which means in 35mm terms at 300mm. Any shorter lens and they would be too far away (for my taste).
The second is the sunset shot from the moving vehicle - 16mm f11, ISO 400 1/500. I did crop some of the foreground but the A7R allows tremendous latitude to do that.
The third is a rhino at sunrise again with the A7R and again at 35mm, f11, ISO 100, 1/500. I did crop this one too, but there is enough resolution to make a large print.
Even in Londolozi (and it is typical of most of the lodges in Sabi Sands), the animals are still too far away if your longest reach is only 90mm. If you are in the open like in the Serengeti or the Mara, you will most definitely need at least 200mm on most shots.
Pradeep