This is Part 2 of my Bronica S2A African tour series. Part 1 covered the Namibian leg and a road trip from Windhoek to Solitaire. This part covers the South African leg, which turned out to be the more rewarding of the two trips photographically, even though I had no business expecting it to be.
The setup: I was in South Africa for work meetings the same way I had been in Namibia. The fastest route between where I was staying and some of the meetings I had to attend went through Kruger National Park. So I was forced, against my will, to drive straight through one of the most extraordinary wildlife reserves on the planet. Twice.
I had the Bronica S2A with the 50mm Nikkor wide and the 75mm standard. No telephoto. I was completely unprepared for serious wildlife photography. I came back with a single keeper elephant frame that justifies the whole trip, plus a few other decent ones.
This article is about that experience, the practical reality of doing wildlife photography on the wrong kit, and a small philosophical thread about whether photographing experiences is a betrayal of them or part of them.
The route, briefly
For anyone curious about the practical geography: we entered Kruger at Phalaborwa Gate on the western boundary and drove south through the park to Skukuza, where I had a meeting the next morning. Exited at Skukuza Gate, slept nearby, re-entered through Skukuza Gate the following day for the meeting, then onward to Skukuza Airport for the flight out.
So two days of driving through Kruger with a few hours each time available for photography. Not a wildlife trip, but more wildlife time than I had any right to expect on a work schedule.
My driver was Zac, who like Alpha in Namibia was patient, willing to stop, and a genuinely good human to spend long drives with. Get a driver who is only driving you for this kind of trip. That control over the pace and the stopping is what makes any wildlife photography possible at all.
Day one: the Bronica with no telephoto
The first morning I had three frames left on a roll of FP4 Plus loaded in the Bronica. I was finishing the black-and-white work I had started in the previous days before switching to colour. The animals were not waiting for me to finish the roll.
A specific cock-up worth flagging. I had also brought my Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515 as a backup camera and decided it would be sensible to load it with colour film for the day’s work. I opened the back of the Nettar to find I had already loaded a roll of Kodak Gold 200 at some point and forgotten about it. Some unknown number of frames already exposed with no idea what was on them.
Lesson noted: always check what is loaded in your cameras before storing them. Mark every loaded camera with a note saying what film is in it and how many frames have been used. I had not done this and lost a half-roll of frames.
I unloaded the Gold (wasted because the unknown exposures could not be recovered without ruining anything more), loaded a fresh roll of Kodak Ektar 100 for the brighter conditions, and went on with the day.
![PLACEHOLDER: the Bronica S2A and Zeiss Ikon Nettar on the dashboard of the car, ready for the Kruger drive]
The giraffe
The first real wildlife encounter was a giraffe right on the road in front of us. Not hiding in distant trees, not visible only with binoculars, actually standing in the road, looking at us with the mild curiosity that habituated wildlife sometimes shows toward vehicles.
This was the perfect first subject for my no-telephoto kit. The giraffe was close. The 75mm Nikkor was the right lens. f/8 at 1/500th on the Ektar 100 in bright morning sun gave me a properly exposed frame.
I asked Zac to creep the car forward as slowly as he could to close the distance further. The giraffe held still. I made the frame. The giraffe eventually walked off and I made one or two more compositions as it moved.
The keeper from this set is the close approach, with the giraffe filling much of the 6x6 frame on the 75mm, the head turned slightly toward camera, soft Kruger bush behind. A real photograph, made by accident in the first half hour of a drive I had no expectation of usable photography from.
Then we had to keep moving. The work day was the work day. Cameras away, drive on, get to the meeting.
Day two: the puncture
The next morning we were back in Kruger heading toward Skukuza Airport. About three hours of driving time before I had to be at check-in, with most of it through the park.
A few kilometres in: a puncture.
This was both a frustration and a comic interlude. Every other vehicle that passed us slowed down to look because vehicles stopped at the side of the road in Kruger are usually stopped because they have spotted wildlife. Other drivers were looking around hopefully for whatever rare creature we must have seen.
The look on one woman’s face as she drove past, trying to spot what we were photographing, realising slowly that what we were actually photographing was a flat tyre, was one of the small comic moments of the trip. She gave us a “what are you looking at?” expression. We had no animal to point at. Just a deflated tyre and an embarrassed driver.
Zac changed the tyre quickly and professionally and we were back on the road within twenty minutes or so. The unscheduled stop cost us some of the morning’s wildlife window but Kruger is generous and there was still time.
![PLACEHOLDER: the punctured tyre with the spare wheel out, ready to be fitted, on the verge somewhere in southern Kruger]
The elephant
The encounter of the trip.
An elephant on the road, walking parallel to us in roughly the same direction. Big, calm, unbothered by our presence. Zac slowed the car and kept his distance. We drove alongside the elephant for perhaps a minute or two while it walked.
Then the elephant moved closer to the road.
This is the moment in any close wildlife encounter where you have to think carefully. You are in a vehicle. The animal is bigger than the vehicle. If the animal decides it does not want you there, you cannot win the argument. Elephants in Kruger are generally calm around vehicles, but generally is not always.
Zac handled it perfectly. Held the car still, kept the engine on quietly, gave the elephant all the space it wanted to dictate the encounter. The elephant walked closer. Came up to within maybe four or five metres of the car.
I made the frame.
f/8 at 1/500th on the Ektar 100, focus carefully checked on the elephant’s eye through the waist-level finder, frame composed with the elephant filling most of the 6x6 square, the long curve of its trunk leading the eye through the composition. Squeezed the shutter.
One frame.
The elephant moved on shortly afterward. I made one or two more frames but the close approach had been the moment. The Bronica’s mechanical shutter clunk felt loud in the quiet of the encounter. I worried for half a second that it would startle the animal. It did not. The elephant kept walking.
This is the keeper of the trip. The frame I would print and put on a wall. The frame that justifies carrying a heavy medium format film camera on a work trip across two countries without any photographic intention. The frame that says: this is what film and patience and luck can do when they align.
![PLACEHOLDER: the close-approach elephant frame on Kodak Ektar 100, showing how close the animal came and how the Bronica’s 6x6 format suits this kind of subject]
On not having a telephoto
The practical reality of doing wildlife photography with a 75mm standard lens on 6x6 medium format.
This is equivalent to a 40mm or 50mm on 35mm. Very short for wildlife. The conventional wisdom is that you need 300mm or 400mm minimum for wildlife on 35mm, which is equivalent to about 600-800mm on 6x6. I was working at less than 1/10th of the recommended reach.
What this means in practice:
1. You can only photograph animals that come very close. Anything more than 20 feet away will be tiny in the frame and disappointing in the print. I told Zac repeatedly: “we are only stopping if the animal is literally on or next to the road.”
2. You depend on the animals’ behaviour, not your own positioning. With a long lens you can hang back and let the animal do what it does. With a short lens, you need the animal to come to you. Most do not.
3. The keeper rate is brutal. Probably 95% of wildlife encounters in Kruger that day were photographically wasted because the subjects were too far away. Only the rare close encounter produced a usable frame.
4. When it works, the results are unusual. A wildlife frame on medium format with a wide-ish lens looks different from a 35mm telephoto wildlife frame. More environmental context, less subject isolation, more sense of the animal in its habitat. The elephant frame has the elephant filling the centre but also includes the road, the dust, the bush around. It is a wildlife photograph that is also a landscape photograph. I would not have got that with a 400mm lens.
So the kit was wrong in obvious ways. But the kit also produced one of the better photographs I made on the whole trip, partly because of its constraints rather than despite them.
On photographing experiences
A small philosophical thread I want to put in here because my description of this video raised it and it deserves to be addressed properly.
My wife is always telling me to put the camera down and just experience wherever we are. This is reasonable advice. Many people will read this article and feel the same way. The camera as a barrier between the photographer and the world. The photograph as an act of consumption rather than presence. The travel photographer as someone who looks at everything through a viewfinder and never really sees anything.
I disagree with this framing, but I want to be honest about why.
For me, the camera does not distance me from the experience. It deepens it. Looking at the world with the intention of photographing it forces me to look more carefully than I would otherwise. I notice things I would not have noticed. The way the light is falling. The texture of an animal’s hide. The composition of a landscape. The small graphic incident in the foreground.
Without the camera I would have seen the elephant. I would have remembered it. With the camera I saw the elephant differently, as a composition, as a problem of light and timing and focus, as something worth real attention.
This is not better or worse than seeing it without a camera. It is different. Some people get their attention through the act of looking. Others need a reason to look carefully, and a camera is that reason.
My wife is right that sometimes the camera does become a barrier. The trick is to know when. Family meals, intimate conversations, moments of grief or joy with people you love? Put the camera down for these.. Wildlife encounters in Kruger National Park while passing through on work travel? Keep the camera up.
If you read this article and disagree, that is fine. There is no correct answer to the camera vs presence question, only personal answers. Mine is that the camera enriches my presence more often than it diminishes it.
The Bronica S2A as a wildlife camera
A few practical notes for anyone considering taking an S2A on this kind of trip.
The 6x6 frame is excellent for environmental wildlife portraits where the animal is part of a composition rather than isolated against a blurred background. The square frame composes well with animals positioned centrally.
The mirror slap is loud. Mirror lock-up would help in genuine wildlife situations. I did not use mirror lock-up on these frames because I was working too quickly to set up properly. For serious wildlife with the S2A, learn the mirror lock-up workflow.
The waist-level finder is workable but limiting. A prism finder would have been faster for tracking moving animals. The waist-level was fine for the elephant because the elephant was stationary at the critical moment. It would have been impossible for a fast-moving animal.
The lens choice is brutal for wildlife. As discussed. A 200mm or 300mm Nikkor for the S2A would have changed the entire trip and let me get keeper frames of distant animals that I had no chance of capturing with the 75mm.
The build quality survives African conditions. Dust, heat, rough roads, vehicle vibration. The S2A handled all of it without issue. Brought it home in the same condition I had taken it out.
The snake-skin question
A minor confession. The S2A has new leatherette on it that I had applied a few months before this trip. Snake-skin pattern, because I had been on a 1970s aesthetic kick when I was choosing covering. The full re-skinning story is its own article about the process and the colour choice.
I am still not sure whether the snake-skin was a good idea. Some days I look at the camera and love it. Other days I think it looks ridiculous. The Kruger trip leaves me undecided because the camera performed so well that I do not really care what it looks like.
If a camera takes pictures like the elephant frame, the cosmetics matter less than they would on a less capable camera.
What worked and what did not
A summary, in order of usefulness.
Worked: bringing the camera at all. Worked: having a driver who would stop when asked. Worked: the Ektar 100 for bright daylight wildlife in the Kruger sun. Worked: patience on the elephant approach. Worked: the Bronica S2A’s reliability through the trip.
Did not work: forgetting what film was in the Nettar (lost frames). Did not work: bringing only 50mm and 75mm lenses for wildlife. Did not work: trying to use the waist-level finder for fast-moving subjects. Did not work: the puncture (although it produced a comedy story).
For any future African wildlife trip: 200mm telephoto minimum, prism finder, mirror lock-up workflow practised in advance, fresh chemistry mixed for the trip’s specific rolls, a system for tracking which camera has what film in it.
Big thanks
To Zac, my driver in Kruger. Patient, professional, willing to stop, calm under wildlife pressure. The right driver for the trip.
To the elephant, who came close enough for the frame I wanted. An animal I will not forget.
To the woman who looked confused at our flat tyre, who I hope is reading this and now knows what we were photographing.
What’s next on the channel
The Africa trip is over and I am back to a normal-ish photography schedule. Coming up I have:
- The Pixl-Latr review and a deep dive into my scanning workflow
- More work with the Trioplan 100mm on the Bronica S2A
- Some 3x4 glass plate experiments
Part 1 of this series is at the link if you have not read it. Namibia is the more spectacular landscape. South Africa produced the better photograph. Such is the strange logic of travel photography on film.
If you have done your own film photography in Kruger or anywhere similar, drop me a comment. I would love to hear about your wildlife frames and what kit choices you made.