Close up

[Jim B.]

A couple from yesterday.

300mm f/6.3 ISO 500 1/2000"

300mm f/7.1 ISO 500 1/1600"

[homer]

i think your images are very good i do a bit of this myself and think i could learn from these well done

[Andy]

Beautiful colours and bokeh....great subjects too I think the little beetle in the first is a Soldier Beetle of some sort. The DoF covers the subjects perfectly in the first but the butterfly in the second is a bit far back on the flower making life more difficult. Looks like you had some great light and aligned the plane of focus to get the entire butterfly sharp but perhaps you could have stopped down as much as you could and brought the focus towards you slightly? At this sort of magnification DoF is pretty much half in front of where you focus and half behind which is why I'm suggesting bring the focus back a little if shooting at a smaller aperture as you don't need the extra DoF behind the subject here. You may have been able to get the whole of the thistle flower and the butterfly sharp.

[Dave Humphries]

~ which is why I'm suggesting bring the focus back a little if shooting at a smaller aperture as you don't need the extra DoF behind the subject here. You may have been able to get the whole of the thistle flower and the butterfly sharp.

Hi Andy,

In Jim's defence, and my admittedly limited experience, with a subject like this that is liable to only be present for a second or two, this is for the butterfly (unless you get unbelievably lucky) as good as it gets.

I don't doubt with a static subject, or a captive subject and only one place for it to feed, what you suggest might be possible. It's just I have found the reality of photographing these things in the wild to be incompatible with the care you suggest - but maybe that's just my lack of experience talking

However I do have to say your results (I had a peek in your Flickr photostream ) are spectacular and perhaps indicate my view above is incorrect!

I suspect this comes back to Colin's theory that the more successful anyone becomes at something, it has much to do with them engineering their own 'luck'.

I'll shut-up now before I put my size 8's any further in my mouth

[Andy]

I don't doubt with a static subject, or a captive subject and only one place for it to feed, what you suggest might be possible. It's just I have found the reality of photographing these things in the wild to be incompatible with the care you suggest - but maybe that's just my lack of experience talking

You are quite correct in saying that would be difficult, particularly with butterflies in the middle of a sunny day. They're not an easy subject at the best of times but with practice the technique becomes more instinctive and you do it automatically. Reducing magnfication slightly can help a fair bit in increasing DoF too.

Or maybe it's just because I'm a Scotsman so I like thistles to be sharp

[JK6065]

vey nice macro's.
I like the use of DoF and in #2 the butterfly is nice in focus. Although I would consider some cropping to give the subjects (insects and plants) a bit more impact if it where my photo's. Speaking of which I took nearly iddentical shots in something calles "The Butterflycave" in the France Pyrenees.

[Jim B.]

Thanks for the comments.I agree,hindsight,I could have stepped back a bit to get the thistle in focus.I'm still learning so "on the fly" adjustments are still a bit difficult for me.My crops are always on the light side because I like to give a sense of the environment the shots are taken in.I realize this is somewhat a result of my lack of compositional skills
Working on that too.