evening butterfly

[bugster0121]

Saw the butterfly flying around the berry tree and finally captured this image when he landed. C&C always welcome.





Canon 60d, f5.6, 1/1600 sec, ISO 1000, 300mm used 75-300 zoom

[AB26]

Tim,

The image is a tad soft. You probably cropped a bit too much and shooting at ISO 1000 and cropping will soften your image. Look at the bit of branches in the right and left bottom corners, never leave small bits that can be distracting in an image.

You should be able to sharpen the image if you use the Colin Southern method.

[bugster0121]

Much thanks will recrop it and research that sharpening method.

Thanks

Tim








Hi Andre:

I recropped this, know where I can find any tutorials on the Colin Southern sharpening method? I searched thru this forum and could not find one and tried a google search as well.
I read thru part of the tutorial on sharpening here and after recropping and redoing the expsosure I tried editing a bit in Lightroom (just purchased it and have not read a lot about it so I am very new at it) then tried some sharpening. The first pic I used the lightroom autotone and the second was by hand using the manual controls and I tried curves to lower the white a little. Is this a bit better or I just added a 4x6 are these better?

Thanks

Tim

[Geoff F]

To be totally honest, Tim, I get many shots like this while attempting to find a perfect angle; and apart from any identification uses, they all get zapped!

Firstly, your shooting settings are all wrong. F5.6 is far too shallow to give a good depth of sharp focus, and you don't need so high a shutter speed unless your subject is actually moving.

With regard to the softness. Did you use auto or manual focus? I find manual focus to be tricky at times for those moving subjects but auto focus gives me too many false focus problems.

I suspect that might have happened here as the harder and closer leaf edge seems better focused.

And I always use a tripod for lenses like you used (300 mm). Many lenses are a fraction soft at their extremities so shooting around 280 mm can produce better results.

Even when you have all the shooting settings correct, getting that perfect pose from a wild insect is very difficult and needs a lot of stealthy moving around to get just the right camera angle to clearly show its head and antennae or getting the wings in a suitably pleasant pose.

If I get 10% of my shots to be keepers I reckon I have had a very good day.

[bugster0121]

Hi Geoff:


Thank you very much for the advise. This was a random shot was coming home from store and the berry tree right outside my condo when I saw the butterfly. Had the ISO on auto and cranked up the speed as it was flying around. The camera kept wanting to focus on a leaf so I changed to spot metering and had the spot on the butterfly I thought. My thinking was to get the butterfly in focus was why I chose the low aperture and was worried about lighting with the high speed. My position was around 6-7 feet angled downward from the butterfly. Probably took around 30 pictures from different angles but once I saw this shot tried to zoom in as much which is when I probably zoomed in too much (wanted as much detail as possible) and should of increased the aperture and lowered the speed then but was caught up in the moment. I have got to remember the basics before I click. Sigh....

Thanks a bunch for the pointers. All C&C always welcome.

Tim

[AB26]

Tim, much better.
Stick with CiC and you will learn plenty.

[bugster0121]

Hi Andre:

Ty very much

Tim