Travel Light

We encourage first-time visitors to the rainforest to refine their packing lists and minimize luggage.
This will make it much easier for you to transition between vehicles, airports, canoes and lodging, allowing you to have an experience which is less tiring, and much more spontaneous and enjoyable.

Try to travel as light as possible, so that you can bring the nucleus of your photographic equipment as carry-on luggage and be less burdened during your tour. Be sure to review your international carrier’s requirements and policies on luggage.

There will be nice opportunities for bird photography at the parrot and parakeet licks and during our dugout canoe trips up and down the main rivers and inlets. For birds, you will want a super-telephoto lens (minimum 400 or 500mm), with an external shoe-mount TTL flash for fill light and getting those “catch lights” in the birds’ eyes. We recommend you also get a “flash extender.” These are pocket-size folding Fresnel lens attachments that magnify your flash output for telephoto lens use.

For general wildlife photography, you can make fine images with a 300mm-500mm lens. The “fast” versions of these lenses, with large maximum apertures (e.g. 300mm f/2.8, 500mm f/2.8) are expensive for a reason, allowing photographers to monitor focus and maintain shutter speed in the lower light levels of dawn and dusk when wildlife are typically more active. Two online outlets for lens rental are linked in the next question. Be sure to bring a tripod which is rigid enough to support your largest lens.

However, these lenses are also very heavy. Today, with the improvements in professional dSLR cameras, they now produce less noise at the higher ISO’s. As a result, you can work with slower lenses and still get fast enough shutter speeds to stop action and obtain sharp images with handheld telephoto lenses. A lens which has become very popular as a telephoto zoom in the Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary Lens available for Canon, Nikon and Sony mounts. At just over $1,000 (December 2021), this is a great value.

Bruce’s favorite lenses are the 24-105mm, 70-200mm and 500mm focal lengths, but most of his work is shot on the two smaller lenses. It’s always best when the focal lengths of your zoom lenses overlap as in the case above. Otherwise, you may find yourself changing lenses too often.

There is no better place for close-up or “macro” photography than the neotropical rainforests of the western Amazon basin. From early morning butterflies, to miniature plant designs to night hike discoveries, the closeup opportunities are endless. Macro lenses up to 100mm in focal length allow you to get close to your subjects.

Getting close really facilitates photography for small subjects in two ways. First, the short focusing distances allow you to work around intervening leaves and branches. Another benefit is your strobe will provide a larger light source in relation to your subject, yielding softer light. If you don’t have a speciality macro lens, then find a compatible extension tube or a high-quality two-element diopter (aka “close-up filter”) set made by the major lens manufacturers. These can be placed on standard short telephotos and short telephoto zoom lenses. On our night hikes near the lodges, you enjoy closeup photography of insects and amphibians. It’s very helpful to have a dedicated TTL off-camera cable for your flash. As the critters move, you can move the strobe with them.

Light comes at a premium on the rainforest floor, so you shouldn’t be using too much filtration, but a polarizing filter can reduce glare off wet vegetation and cut through mid-day haze. Landscapes can have very high contrast between sky and forest interior, so try to work when there is cloud cover and avoid including the sky in your images to keep the scene within the recordable range of contrast of your camera’s sensor.

We will provide participants with a more detailed list of recommended items before the trip that will help you, whether you are a beginner or a seasoned nature photographer.