With regard to camera equipment, visitors should take light bags in the forest to see gorillas. Before you begin trekking, you are given short time to organize your equipment. Ensure your camera battery is fully charged or have extra batteries and lenses. A gorilla trek can last from 30 minutes to more than 8 hours a day depending on where trackers locate gorillas. We recommend hiring a porter at the beginning of the trek. The terrain is steep and trails gets muddy and slippery during rainy seasons.

Carry waterproof camera bag or rain jacket. Weather alternates quickly; your clothing should be light and changeable for hot sun, rain or coldness. During rainy season, gorilla permits for Uganda are ever on discount and cheap. In addition, damp weather is known to add value to natural light suitable for good gorilla photos.

Photographing gorillas is different from other wildlife safaris because of the dense equatorial tropical rain forest conditions in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park or Mgahinga Gorilla National Park – Uganda and Volcanoes National Park – Rwanda.

It means that visitors must use short to medium wide angle cameras lenses. For instance a 24 to 105 or 70 to 200 millimeter zoom. Long telephoto lenses or tripods can be disappointing due to thick vegetation because you must stay 7 meters away and the gorillas may even come closer. Always stay in a tight group of 8 people and moving alone for a better photo angle is not allowed.

Monopods are useful since you can easily shift or fix while following gorillas that move frequently under thick vegetation.  As much as visitors love to shoot many photos, you should spare some minutes during one to enjoy watching gorillas with your naked eyes.

Gorillas live in dense forests; your photos are often confronted by thick canopies, vines or branches. You need to shoot with maximum shutter speed for example between 604 ISO to 4000 ISO.

Strictly flashlight photography is prohibited even when the gorillas hide under low light or dark forest canopies. In that case, recording a video can be a good option.

Visitors strictly spend one hour with the gorillas and guides allow visitors to approach gorillas with cameras only. Carrying heavy camera equipment will lead to lost gorilla photography chances.