Nicest things to do is finding a butterfly

[Andre]

Nice photo- excellent sharpness as well; what lens are you using?

All the butterfly pix of these last two weeks that I posted here were make with a Canon EOS 550D and a EF 100mm Macro f2.8 USM

Obviously hand held, and mandatory small aperture (f11-16) and short shutter speed (1/200s) you could either choose for ISO 12,800 and get pea soup noise texture or add a flash and shoot crisp with 100 ISO.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Excellent... "Canon's most fun per dollar lens" :)

 

[Andre]

yes, absolutely, it is.

 

[turbo]

Here's some competition for Andy in the notabutterfly category. I told you that coneflowers attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds...

(Fibonacci sequence, anybody?)

 

[Andre]

To illustrate that, here is a life size crop of that Morpho menelaus that I posted earlier in this thread:

from:

Found another butterfly greenhouse. A few of today's captures:

...

...

 

[Andy Resnick]

Here's some competition for Andy in the notabutterfly category. I told you that coneflowers attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds...

(Fibonacci sequence, anybody?)

To illustrate that, here is a life size crop of that that I posted earlier in this thread:


from:

I'm seeing the advantages of a flash.

 

[turbo]

No flash in my case, Andy. Just a little Panasonic point-and-shoot in Macro AF mode. I love that little pocket camera.

 

[HeLiXe]

Here's some competition for Andy in the notabutterfly category. I told you that coneflowers attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds...

(Fibonacci sequence, anybody?)

@_@ Oooooooooooooh pretty!

 

[turbo]

@_@ Oooooooooooooh pretty!

Thanks! Snapshot with a little DMC-ZS3 in macro mode. I'd love to have a Canon 100mm macro (fun!), but for now, I'm getting by with what I've got.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Thanks! Snapshot with a little DMC-ZS3 in macro mode. I'd love to have a Canon 100mm macro (fun!), but for now, I'm getting by with what I've got.

I'm really impressed! Just shows I need to work on my technique... :)

 

[Andre]

This is about the closest you'd get, category: almost-a-butterfly or pond damselflies.

This is a minimum range shot 1:1 macro of a yet to determine species. It's total length estimated just short of 2 in. Image reduced to 16%

The lack of DOF and the movement of the reed (and camera ) precludes manual focussing, lock the focus and readjust the composition. So I used the focus setting "AI Servo", focussing continuously. As a consequence the head is centered in the picture and not a lot of body is visible.

A 100% crop, showing the narrow DOF.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I'm starting to get better: here's a 100% crop using a 24mm macro, stopped down to f/11 or so:

http://a.imageshack.us/img529/9311/dsc00984u.jpg

 

[turbo]

I'm starting to get better: here's a 100% crop using a 24mm macro, stopped down to f/11 or so:

Very nice!

 

[Borek]

Why does it look like pictures taken at my lavender bush?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Why does it look like pictures taken at my lavender bush?

Howdy, neighbor!:)

 

[Andy Resnick]

I want to be able to take pictures like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnhallmen/3990029525/sizes/o/in/photostream/

 

[Borek]

I want to be able to take pictures like this:

Don't feel alone

 

[~christina~]

But the butterfly (~Christina~, did you identify it already?) was hovering as can be seen from the folded legs and yet it was quite crisp, so I decided to unreject it and do some RAW post processing, to get rid of the noise due to the underexposure.

I still stand by my original guess of the butterfly being a Queen Alexandra's Birdwing.
I found this picture of a closed winged butterfly which looks similar to what you have in your picture.
http://www.arkive.org/queen-alexandras-birdwing/ornithoptera-alexandrae/

Edit: It seems that there are a variety of "Birdwing" butterfly species which generally all have the red body and yellow abdomen.

 

[Andre]

So I went to the butterfly greenhouse in the botanical garden of the University of Utrecht today, right, the one with the paleomagnetic laboratory, https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2304947#post2304947 , the last weekend it is open.

I saw this:

 

[drizzle]

Woah :!) Beautiful Andre. Do you have a larger size? I'd like to set it as my desktop screen :)

 

[Evo]

Very beautiful Andre.

 

[micromass]

Wow, very beautiful picture, Andre! I love those cute little butterflies!

 

[Andre]

Thanks, all and for drizzle the full format picture, uncropped http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/IMG_2379hdn.JPG

 

[drizzle]

Wonderful! Cheers Andre :)

 

[Andy Resnick]

Excellent shot!

 

[Andre]

Another butterfly greenhouse today. The wettest hottest so far. I had to change shirts, great that it's cool outside today.

The star of the show

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/but1.jpg

More in close up

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/but2.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/but3.jpg

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/but4.jpg

now, these little yellow dots? Pollen? parasite? parasite eggs?:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/but5.jpg

Not the star of the show, but the shot is esthetically the most pleasing IMO:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/but6.jpg

 

[M Quack]

Great pictures, I love the DoF you get on the macros. I would maybe play with cropping a bit. E.g. trying a square image format

 

[Andre]

Great pictures, I love the DoF you get on the macros. I would maybe play with cropping a bit. E.g. trying a square image format

Yes you're right, these are mere thumbnails of the whole frames for quick result. There is a lot of finetuning with post processing and cropping ahead.

 

[lisab]

Nice! I'm beginning to think butterflies are more vain than cats. They seem to love to pose!

 

[Evo]

Absolutely beautiful Andre!