White Butterfly

This is a photograph that I took when out for a walk. There were a lot of white butterflies about on this patch of flowers, but, as is usual with the whites, they don’t stay still for long. I followed my own rules and took a couple of pictures further away which will be OK when cropped a little. Happy that I had some good pictures I then moved a little closer and looked briefly at the composition of the picture before I pressed the shutter button. The result is a picture that needed no cropping, has all the detail I needed, has good colours and the right depth of field.
The photograph was taken once more with my 100mm macro lens handheld at ISO200 1/200secs and f/8.0.
If I could take it again, I may reduce the aperture slightly to make the top of the front wing and antenna a little sharper.

Painted Lady on Buddleia

This is the best picture that I took of a Painted Lady last weekend.
The depth of field is fine, it is sharp when viewed close up, and I like the composition, although some might argue that there is dead space, I think this just contrasts nicely. The same macro lens was used, aperture was f/10, ISO 200 1/320 secs.
So, why has this worked so much better? It comes down to the trap that I fall into whenever I have my macro lens near an insect – I keep trying to get too close. If you looked at the website I mentioned on my last post, then you will know that the depth of field is in part determined by the distance you are from the subject. In this case the butterfly was several feet away from me; in the last photo, it was less than a foot away. The moral of the story is, if your camera is reasonably good, you will have enough detail to zoom in / crop and get some good detail – it all depends on what you want from your photo.

Painted Lady Butterfly

I thought I would share one of my recurring photography mistakes with you. As you may have noticed I take quite a few macro shots, my macro lens tying with my compact Canon Ixus 60 as my best ever buy. However, it does pull me into making the same mistake time after time.

As noted in my previous post I had the intention of taking some photos of Painted Lady butterflies on the first sunny Saturday that we had in a while. I did manage this goal, but a lot of the shots were not as good as they could have been if I had sufficient depth of field. The problem with a macro lens is that it has only a very small distance where the subject is completely sharp. If you want to know more about depth of field you will find some great and helpful info on this website.

In theory, reducing the size of the aperture should help this problem as it provides greater depth of field, but, if you are taking a picture outdoors of something that moves you need to be able to use a fairly fast shutter speed even if you are using a tripod. I have a plethora of pictures to prove this to be the case. As you can see from the photo, most of the butterfly is in focus and sharp, particularly the back wing. However, the depth of field is not sufficient to get the front wing in focus as well, which, to me, spoils an otherwise good shot of a butterfly.

The shot was taken at ISO200, shutter speed 1/250s and aperture f/10.

I did get a shot of a Painted Lady that I am really pleased with, and I will share that in my next post.