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Plains Zebras are very passionate. Affectionate or fighting at the drop of a hat. Horses got strength and endurance and zebras got the rest perhaps.

I’ve been struggling a little with my photographic workflow since this 20 year old Nikon D200 uses the old compact flash cards and my card reader no longer reads them. One bit of emergency photo recovery and some new software later, I’m back in business. I should be posting more regularly on this trip. There’s been a lot of talk about the qualities of old CCD sensors like this one. But really the sensors before this generation (the last) were rather terrible. ...

The Sabie River bridge at Kruger Gate with denizens.

Three days on the road and now we get to relax. We’re not going to be go-getters tomorrow. We had to go through the park pretty swiftly from Malelane Gate to Kruger Gate and, although we saw tons of great stuff, I only took a handful of pics. A Steenbok is the most delightful little animal. And those terrapins are showing us the way - basking on top of a fully alive but very sleepy hippo.

No time to enjoy this crumbling Melville splendour. Leaving eJozi early. So wonderful to see @sophdex and @ezlemoen though.

Three Sisters in the evening and Colesberg in the morning.

I ran a roll of colour negative film through the F100 mainly to check if it was leaving tramlines on the film as this camera has sometimes done. It passed the test so I’m loading up the queen of all colour films, Fujichrome Velvia 50 which, know it or not, you saw splashed across magazines throughout the 90s. I found this precious roll in the fridge (expired 2009) and, since I’ve discovered there’s a place processing slide film in Cape Town, wanted to shoot it on the F100. The F100 came out in 1999 and can use Nikon’s most recent F-mount lenses, including those with image stabilisation for maximum sharpness - especially with a very slow, 50ISO film like this. A lot of young people may only think of film for producing images with character. But Velvia can theoretically out-resolve the highest resolution full-frame digital cameras and produce wild colour. ...

First getaway in about 18 months. Sorely needed and graciously offered. @sophdex and @ezlemoen have been putting us up in Brenton on Sea. It’s just been lazy nonsense - building stupid hard jigsaw puzzles, eating and drinking and visiting the free living primates at Monkey Land.

My dad playing the role of 🍌 for scale next to a big tree. Most of the oaks in Cape Town are in bad shape when they reach this age because their health suffers from not getting the months of dormant cold they’re evolved to expect. But apparently the care of the gardeners in Kirstenbosch kept this old stick in good nick. Can they also save it from the shot-borer beetle that’s going to wipe out the rest of Cape Town’s oaks?

Another flower that looks like a frozen space explosion to me.