It goes without saying, you’ll need a long lens here. I had on the Fuji 55-200mm for 90% of the time and probably wouldn’t have missed another lens if I hadn’t taken them. I did bring the Fuji 16mm which can do psuedo macro for some close ups in Danum Valley but in Kinabatangan, the 55-200mm never came off.  This was long enough for 90% of things. There were a few birds that I could have done with more reach but I’m not really into birding so didn’t really matter.

It can rain here a lot so bring a waterproof bag or large ziplock bag for your gear and going in and out of air conditioning into the high humidity, you need to take that into consideration.  Bring a blower and lense cleaner because in this environment you’re bound to get some shit on your lens or sensor when you’re changing lenses. This trip I found out for me, I was missing a fast long lens.  The only thing Fuji has is the 50-140mm and that probably wasn’t enough reach. On most holidays I find myself shooting a lot at night and needing something fast and I rarely take the 56mm 1.2 as I generally shoot that wide open.  

Anyway, for monkeys and Orang Utan’s and birds, you will need a long telephoto.  Probably the 100-400mm would have been good but I can’t justify buying a lens for one trip and can’t see myself using it that often. As mentioned, for me, the 55-200mm was long enough for 90% of the stuff I wanted to photograph and unless you’re really into birds or wildlife photography (in which case you’re most likely going to have something in that range anyway), something around the 200-300mm range will suffice.

It’s quite difficult shooting the animals you see here as you’re quite often shooting into the trees amongst sky which is not easy.  A good tip is to leave your camera on 1600 ISO, set it on high speed so you’re ready to take shots in a hurry. You can rattle off a bunch of shots if the animal is moving quickly or running flying away.  If they stay still, you then have time to put it on back on single shot mode and take your time to compose something decent. I didn’t even consider bringing a film camera, and in hindsight it would have been a waste of time as you need a long fast lens.  Shout out to the wildlife photographers’ of the pre-digital error – they must have known what they were doing!  

Don’t forget to put down your camera from time to time and experience things with your eyes.  It’s nice to see something in person and not with your eye behind the lens all the time, especially when you’re in Danum Valley.  I much preferred Danum Valley, but from a wildlife perspective, at least in terms of spotting wildlife and taking photos of wildlife, Kinabatangan is probably better, and probably one of many reasons why there are more people in Kinabatangan.

There’s no camera shops or any shops that sell anything remotely camera related so if you forget anything, you’re basically screwed.  So make sure you have a gar checklist before you go and you don’t forget anything. Spare batteries are essential, as are memory cards and lens cleaning shit and sensor cleaning shit.  If you’d like any advice or information on photography in Borneo, get in touch with me here or on Twitter.