Kilimanjaro Safari- close time in May?
- Thread starter ckmiles
- Start date
Tiggerlover91
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2001
I would think they are open later. You can find out easily by trying to pick up a FP for the time you want to do the ride. If it's available, I'm going to say that's a pretty good sign it's open later.
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2014
FYI, you can toggle the date on this page to see currently scheduled attraction hours: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/attractions/animal-kingdom/kilimanjaro-safaris/
ckmiles
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2008
This was very helpful! Thank you!
marikujawa
Arblover
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2010
Yesterday (May 4) the last Safari left at 8:45. There was a large sign to that effect posted outside the standby entrance.
PrincessWithABlaster
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2016
That was also true on May 3rd. Park closed at 10.
maccagerl
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2008
Yes most of them are still out. The lions are nocturnal thus will be more active at night. Giraffes also remain active at night. Of course the flip side is it will be too dark to take photos.
That actually will depend on your camera, if you have really good low light abilities, then you should be able to get some shots, especially when the vehicle is stationary. Even the Google Pixel 3 phones will be able to get some pretty nice shots thanks to their night shot option.
Eh, the GP3 won't do wildlife shots, their night shot option is street type only and needs different lighting than you'll get in AK. Plus it doesn't have a telephoto lens and I don't want to shove my phone within a few feet of a critter to get that sort of shot.
But yes, you can take photos of animals in almost pitch black with the right equipment, which isn't even that expensive, even from a moving vehicle. Nikon's VR and some of Canon's IS systems have a mode to remove vehicle motion (either automatically engaged or via a switch on the lens). The light pollution at WDW is so bad that with even a slow lens and good sensor, your biggest trouble will be getting enough light to focus by. Even during midday though, it's easy to end up pushing your ISO to 6400 or higher if you're looking into deep shade and need shutter speed to stop motion.
Here's one I took in the African bush at night with two zebras, even with some limited artificial lighting we had this is far darker than AK ever can get, and you can see the moon in it to give an idea of light level - even with my naked eye I could barely see the second zebra behind the first. The AF was able to lock on because of the zebra's stripes.
And here's one of a crab taken in full daylight, but with the animal in deep shade and also heavily cropped because I ran out of lens (I was a 420mm on a DX camera). Both are ISO6400 and f/5.6, the first is 1/125 and the second at 1/200.
And of course if you're willing to go black and white only (otherwise the photos are unusable due to color noise), you can push exposure even further, to ISO 51,200 or higher, and a faster lens would net me even more light, so I have 6-8 stops more to go in the dark if I really wanted to, and only need about 1% of that amount of light before I had to start dropping my shutter speed.
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Actually, the GP3 can indeed take such shots. The zebra is admittedly far away, but it is doable.
Here is a link since it is too big to upload here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WxhAUAWhW6g9L5ed7
Since the animals are usually closer on the Safari you would be able to get better shots.
It isn't going to be perfect, but still decent. Remember most people are taking photos for their memories, not to print out at insanely large sizes or anything. These aren't going to be professional photos, but still viewable on a phone, computer, digital photo frame, tablet, etc. that most people will view them on.
The photos I posted aren't professional quality either, they're web/computer/photo frame, and printing up to maybe 8x10 or so. My point was more that you can shoot far deeper into the night than AK ever gets with a decent camera, and that you can also encounter the same issues during the daytime in deep shade.
Animals will be closer than that the zebra when you're in AK, yes, but not by much - that zebra was at about 35-40 feet (at least the focus point was at 10-12 meters according to EXIF), a pretty normal distance for KS, but with a GP3 you still only have a wide angle lens with a 76° field of view on a 12 MP sensor, or roughly 1 pixel per 1' of angle. That's even wider than Cartier-Bresson shot, and with such a wide angle a normal sized critter at AK only comes out as 30-50 pixels wide. That's not enough even for a smartphone or digital photo frame to be sharable.
With the basic kit telephoto lens on a cheap 10+ year old camera body, you get at least 10 pixels per 1' of angle - and those photos I posted beyond that in annular resolution since they're using recent bodies - though the first one is still basically a kit lens length at 300mm (the second is just a small subject, I was quite close to it). That nets you 300-500 on an old body, and 500-800 or so pixels on a newer body with just basic kit lenses, both being well beyond the basic sharing quality and getting into the large print category, provided your shot discipline was good.
That's the trouble with the GP3, and really all smartphones. They just fall apart when you need to be at a distance from a subject and zoom in, with the longest smartphone lens commonly available being a 58mm equivalent, something normally used for full body portraits at studio distances. And all of the longer smartphone lenses really compromise your aperture or sensor size or both to get it into your phone, so their low light performance ranges from poor to really bad.
What the GP3 does have is a 1/2.3" sensor with f/1.8 lens, which is a relatively big sensor for a phone and it has a fast lens attached to it, and ISO up to 6400 for basic uses. That's a lot of light on a very sensitive sensor with decent noise performance. For snapshots of people close up, it does darn well, and what most people even with a DSLR should do is use it for the wide angle and keep a telephoto on their camera for KS or really AK in general, to make it easy to jump back and forth without a lens swap.
Aside, the, "Night shot," mode is really a, "Disable the flash," mode. Nobody I know personally with a GP3 actually uses it since their flash is always manually disabled anyway. Flash photography is really for two uses: during daylight to lift shadows (where a phone flash is so weak as to be pointless) and when you have no other choice to get enough light at night. Google just slapped a shiny label on it and sold it as a feature, which is excellent marketing of course but it doesn't add anything technically new.
Actually the night sight does add quite a bit technically new, there is a big difference between turning flash off and using night shot mode and that is with some very fancy camera. It uses quite a few tricks to get better shots. It uses a lot of trickery to accomplish this, but it works very well.
But my overall point is you can get some shots from the safari at night that will be decent.
Also, we have had many of the animals right next to us on the Safari ride, maybe 10 to 15 feet away. That Zebra in my shot was about 200 to 300 feet away and it was pretty close to pitch black outside at the time as some of the lights weren't even on. As I said, the zebras on the Safari would be much closer than in my shot that I posted the link to above and the Pixel 3 would get a much better shot closer up.
As I said, not perfect and I will get much better shots from my high end point and shoot camera, but that is because I know what settings work for it best and it is very high end.
I honestly wouldn't lug around a DSLR at theme parks, I tried that once and it was a pain in the neck, literally.
But my overall point is you can get some shots from the safari at night that will be decent.
Also, we have had many of the animals right next to us on the Safari ride, maybe 10 to 15 feet away. That Zebra in my shot was about 200 to 300 feet away and it was pretty close to pitch black outside at the time as some of the lights weren't even on. As I said, the zebras on the Safari would be much closer than in my shot that I posted the link to above and the Pixel 3 would get a much better shot closer up.
As I said, not perfect and I will get much better shots from my high end point and shoot camera, but that is because I know what settings work for it best and it is very high end.
I honestly wouldn't lug around a DSLR at theme parks, I tried that once and it was a pain in the neck, literally.
gharter
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 3, 2004
thanks. We haven't done the safari close to dark, but sounds like we should.
It does a multiple exposure stack which kind of works until a subject moves, then it drops back to boosted ISO range single shot. It's used to get around the sensor prioritizing readout speed over ISO noise and only having a max native ISO of around 800. But shooting to .dng files, better results can be obtained with a single shot in post than it can even with their AI routines. This gets into computational photography and such which is a whole other discussion.
I've done it, with f/2.8 zooms, but I don't use the strap around my neck, that becomes a pain quickly, not the least of which because most straps are then in the way of shooting! I either use a cross body strap that connects to my tripod plate if I'm going to be lugging the camera all day, or if it's going to be in and out of a bag I sling the strap onto my shoulder when I want the camera available.
Generally though the f/2.8's stay at home, they were only along because it was what I had for a mid zoom. If I bring a DSLR it's with basic kit lenses and maybe a prime or two to keep the size and weight down so the whole bag, which also has a bunch of other stuff for the parks in it, can come with me on rides.
maccagerl
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2008
I mean, yeah you can see it’s a zebra but it’s certainly not a great photo- that one wouldn’t even make it to the photo album , let alone the wall!
maccagerl
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2008
Do you have any decent night safari photos you can post? I have never seen any .
Also no zebras on the safari.
Haha! I kept it because it tells part of the story of that game drive and how dark it got, the rest were much better. I also had quite a bit of hot sensor going on right then, which was pretty unusual since it's a Nikon, so I was capped at ISO 6400 for anything even that small - at a pixel level, there's just garbage hot pixels everywhere. I could push it a couple of stops, but it gets bad quickly. But, well, it's Africa, and I've since upgraded (not only for that reason).
Here's a better one from the same album - edited for projection or screens, I have a different edit for print.
maccagerl
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2008
You have to work with what you’ve got, and I guess when in Africa you’ve got to grab whatever you can. Still I wouldn’t waste my time trying to get photos on the AK sunset safari!
Africa must have been awesome!! I’m sure you’ve got tons of great photos to remember it! You are so lucky to have that experience!
And I get to go back! My in-laws live there, so we have a second trip coming up. One thing about most of Africa is that it's mostly about vacation time and flight prices - everything else is super cheap down there, even in South Africa since the Rand has pretty much crashed. A two week 4/5 star vacation cost less than coach airline tickets to get there.
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