Camera suggestions for safari?

nickp is right just buy a point and shoot or a bridge camera with a good zoom capability

I'm a bit puzzled by the notion that you're an amateur photographer but won't use a camera after this trip. Do you mean you are an inexperienced photographer who has few opportunities to use a camera? If that's what you mean, let me suggest that this trip (wow! what a trip) will be an excellent time to develop a lifelong love affair with photography. You will need a top notch consumer level digital SLR, something in the $800-1,000 range. You will need a really wide angle lens for landscapes, and for closeups of people and places in close quarters. You will need a really long lens (200-300 mm or so) for grabbing far away animals and land features and bringing them in close. And you will need a "normal" lens for walk-around duty. These may not be three different lenses since zoom lenses can cover wide ranges. One zoom or two may do the trick. Check camera and photo web sites for ideas. And don't forget the tripod and a good bag. This will all set you back $2,000 or more. Check the camera stores around you for whether you can rent this equipment for the time you're away. You can save a lot of money by renting, especially if you believe that this photography is not going to become a passion. Have fun.

Don't buy a camera at all. I sold cameras for 10 years in retail. And was always people like you that either bought a camera a day before an important trip and returned home with nothing useful because either 1. the camera was defective or 2. they didn't have enough experience with the camera to make any decent pictures.

Always give yourself 2-to-6 months to get use to a camera.

Fortunately, the animals are generally vehicle tame, so you'll be able to get fairly close. I used a 80-200mm lens on a 1.5x crop sensor DSLR. This worked quite well for most shots of critters. 300mm would have been useful at times. You should also bring along an 18-55mm lens for landscape and people shots.

If you don't have much camera knowledge, using a DSLR may be a bit daunting. It takes an experienced photographer weeks to figure out a new camera. You may be better off using a advanced point & shoot camera with lots of zoom range.

One of the problems you will need to deal with is shooting in subdued light. The outings are generally done at sun-up and sun-down when the animals are most active. You will need to practice shooting in these conditions and understand how high you can set your ISO before noise becomes an issue. Modern DSLRs can shoot at ISO 800 with great results. Taking advantage of Auto ISO mode can be beneficial so you don't need to worry about ISO settings as the lighting changes due to time and clouds. Also, learning about exposure compensation is necessary due to difficult lighting situations you'll come across. I ended up shooting manual mode for most shots due to the lighting conditions. This doesn't leave much time for you to learn about your camera system!

Accessories:

monopod - useful in the vehicles. Using a 'V' rest on the monopod is very handy so the lens rests in a V-notch, just like shooting sticks for hunting. Having a tripod attached to a big camera while in a vehicle is very cumbersome.

t-shirt - use it to cover your camera to keep dust off.

memory cards - use good quality memory cards. I use Sandisk, but there are a few other brands out there which are good. I took four 16GB cards on my trip.

lenses - zoom 70-300mm with image stabilization. zoom 18-55. Use B+W MRC UV filters on your lenses to keep dust at bay.

books - animal guide. Be sure it has birds as well as mammals. A book on basic photography may be a good thing. You need to learn about shutter speed, aperture, ISO, exposure compensation and how they are related. You also need to know about white balance. That's the basics. Then, there's all the camera misc settings which can make life easy or difficult.

As far as cameras, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Sony make decent low-end DSLR cameras which will work great for this sort of trip. For point & shoot, consider Lumix. The Nikon D3200 or D5100, or equivalent in the other manufacturers, will do.

You could stick with something MUCH cheaper. I have a Nikon D3200 and it was only 600 dollars. Good price.

You can chose from seperate lenses, but keep it under 800 dollars.

I have a 300 mm lense also, and this helps a lot to zoom in on things that you cant get close too

good camera, great for action, etc, and good photos as a result.