Telephoto lenses are even more important than the camera itself for quality safari wildlife photography.
Actually, it's often better to first choose the right lens and then get the camera body that fits with it. And what are the right lenses for safari photography?
Ideal Safari Telephoto Lenses
It depends on a number of factors.
First of all, your budget and your purpose with the telephoto lens: In case you are going to go on the occasional safari (or only one) and you practice wildlife photography as a hobby you will have different telephoto lenses requirements to the professional safari photographer who intends to sell the resultant pictures.
The next is lens size: As it is relatively difficult to get very close to your subjects (most reserves don't allow off-road driving), you need to take along a lens with a big magnification. For mammals at least 300mm is adequate (400mm is better) and 600mm for birds.
Another aspect is continuous predictive auto focus: They should also be able to focus automatically for any action picture opportunities that might come along like a fish eagle catching its prey on the water with talons extended or a lion ambushing an impala in a river bed.
The next factor is image stabilization: You may want telephoto lenses with image stabilization to prevent blurring so that you can hand hold it when there is enough light (use a beanbag or tripod when there is low light).
It is also recommended to have one lens than two: In addition, because of the dust that is prevalent on an African safari you want to change lenses as little as possible to prevent the camera mechanisms from clogging up and to avoid missing that split second when the leopard yawns to reveal its sizable canines because you were fumbling with another lens.
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