Safari with a Smartphone? Yes, You Can Get Great Pics on Your Africa Safari with Just a Cellphone.

Safaris and trekking in Africa offer incredible opportunities to capture amazing photos. We were pleased to find out that you can get great shots with just your smartphone. (Photo by John Roberts)

I’ve been traveling light for many years. I always go with carry-on luggage only — a simple small suitcase and a backpack for all my clothes, gear and accessories. 

However, when Colleen and I booked our first safari in Africa, as well as a big bucket-list trip to Uganda to hike to see the mountain gorillas, the luggage limitations became more challenging than even we had been used to. 

You see, there are strict requirements on some of these trips for the size, weight and type of luggage that travelers can carry onto the small bush planes that take you out to the reserves in places such as Kenya, which is where we went for our safari.  

With that in mind, I was definitely resigned to the fact that we would only be bringing our smartphones and a GoPro to capture photos and video during our safari and trekking. That is my usual gear, but I have to admit that I felt a little worried that I would regret not having a big camera with a great zoom lens to get epic photos. 

“Maybe I should rent a nice camera and lens just for this trip,” I thought.  

The carry-on weight limit was 33 pounds per person for the small planes. We did have the option to buy an extra seat on the plane if we wanted to get up to 66 pounds for one person. As it turns out, Colleen and I each packed so efficiently — considering that we had laundry services available at each of our accommodations (in both Uganda and Kenya) — that we ended up carrying about 22 pounds each.  

Note: I have a full article on our packing tips and top tips and advice that we learned from our Africa adventures.  

Check out that post, as well as our two trip vlogs that I’ll post right here. 

So, it turns out that we had was plenty of room for more camera gear if we wanted. However, we still went with just the cellphones and a single GoPro (which I ended up using sparingly). I just didn’t want to hassle with learning to master new equipment, carrying it around, firing off a bunch of shots and still not being thoroughly happy with the results.  

Instead, I stuck with my trusty phone, which would keep the pics and video available immediately for posting to my social media and was something that I was confident in getting pretty good results.  

I also put myself in the right frame of mind about it, meaning I was going to take the best images I could for my personal use while enjoying the experiences with Colleen, my new friends and the animals in real time without getting too hung up on capturing National Geographic-quality pics. 

Setting the right expectations helped ease my mind ahead of time, too.

Well, as it turned out, when we went out onto our treks in Uganda and for our daily “game drives” in Kenya, we were so close to the animals that a big camera setup was not essential at all for this basic traveler.

The pictures were absolutely fine for us. In fact, some turned out quite nicely, I think. This was our first time on a trip like this, so we really didn’t have any idea about what to expect. Now, we know, and so do you. 

Here are some of our favorite shots, all captured with our Google Pixel smartphones. 

What do you think? All of these pictures were taken on the standard settings with my Google Pixel 6 Pro.