Butterfly pics and getting it all pin sharp

[swag72]

I think I am going to sound like a total idiot after this post, but I've hardly got a reputation to lose, so I'll go for it!!!!

Taking butterfly pics - When the butterfly is wings up, I don't find much of an issue with focus. It's all pretty sharp throughout.

Different story when the wings are out - I saw some togs butterfly pics at the weekend and they were really in focus all round the wing when they were extended, or partially so.

I guess I must be doing something wrong?

Generally use a 100-400 set on F8 as I understand this to be the sharpest stop. Ensure that the shutter speeds are pretty high (sometimes I am lucky to get them over 1/1000!!) to avoid camera shake. Focus on the eyes. IS on.

I have pics where the eyes are sharp, so I have got the focus right, but on those bigger specimens the wings are a little soft.

I don't think it's a tecnique issue with the long lens per se, maybe the eyes aren't the best place to focus as if the wings are slightly upwards, the head will be significantly lower than this?

Sorry for being a total idiot!! I hope that some of you out there can share your experiences.

 

[petersmart]

This is more to do with Depth of Field than focussing on the wrong part of the butterfly.

Although the sharpest aperture may be f8 if you're going close at a long focal length then the DOF will be very restricted.

You could try going up a couple of stops and lowering the shutter speed.

And I would say that the eyes are definitely the most important part of these type of shots.

 

[nigpd]

I feel your pain Sara as I experience the same thing and as the previous poster says, it's all about DOF.

If, like me, you dont have a ring flash or similar, then the reliance is on good lighting to be able to get a small enough aperture, like f16, and to be able to maintain a decent shutter speed. I try not to go above ISO 400 because of noise.

To get the wings completely in focus, the ideal would be to take the shot as perpendicular to the body as possible, so the wings are in as flat a plane as they can be, to make best use of the shallow DOF at close distance.... not easy I know but patience is a virtue.

 

[Crazyhorse]

I'm interested in this too.

But if you don't have IS, should you be using a tripod?

LIsa

 

[nigpd]

But if you don't have IS, should you be using a tripod?

Hmmmm I dont think a tripod would be very practical although I've never tried it. Butterflies by their very nature fly about all over the place and by the time you have the tripod in place and possibly disturbed whatever they are on due to having to position the legs etc, I think they would be off.

Possibly a monopod might work but again you would be fiddling with getting the height of it just right.

I find even hand held I am subtly adjusting position of the camera to get the right composition and to maintain focus so with a monopod or tripod to contend with, I reckon it would be very difficult or even impossible to achieve

 

[tdodd]

To get the wings completely in focus, the ideal would be to take the shot as perpendicular to the body as possible, so the wings are in as flat a plane as they can be, to make best use of the shallow DOF at close distance.... not easy I know but patience is a virtue.

I agree. Your angle of approach is crucial. Here's a quick shot I took this morning, at 400mm, f/9, 1/1250, 400 ISO, cropped to 1/4 of the frame to be reproduced here as a 33% crop. The sharpness isn't quite there, but it is close.

If you look at the DOF figures for a 100-400 at 400mm and f/8, focused at the MFD of 1.8m your DOF is under 1/2 cm. Assuming your focusing is mm perfect your DOF will actually only cover the subject from 2.4mm in front of the focused point to 2.4mm behind. If you focus on the body, and the wings are anything but flat, and you are at any angle other than almost perfectly square, you will have a tough time to get everything sharp. In fact, if you are at an angle, and the body is sharp, then you can be almost certain the wings will not be.

The more you zoom in to the image the smaller the DOF becomes, because you are magnifying the image more and that magnifies the OOF bits more. The problem with shooting small things is that you need a lot of magnification, and lots of magnification means you have very little DOF to play with. As a little test, try plugging the numbers into the online DOF calculator here - http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html. Try the following two sets of figures....

50D + 400mm lens at f/8 and a distance of 180cm. You get a DOF of 0.48cm.

now double the distance and double the focal length to compensate. i.e. try....

50D + 800mm lens at f/8 and 360cm. What DOF do you now get?

Now try the same thing for a 200mm lens at 90cm. What is the DOF?

You will find that DOF is tied tightly to the degree of magnification you need for your subject. Changing lenses or distances won't do you a bit of good. If you want the butterfly to fill 1/4 of the frame then your DOF will be the same, however you do it. The only thing you can change, to gain more DOF, is your aperture. The problem with stopping down too much is that (a) your shutter speed has to drop; or (b) your ISO has to go up; and (c) if you stop down smaller than f/7.1 then diffraction will begin to affect the sharpness/resolution at the focused point. The thing is, gains in DOF may well outweigh losses through diffraction, so you may need to stop down to f/11 or even more. But then you need very good light for your 400mm lens, or a tripod for stability. In direct sunshine you might try f/11, 1/400, 200 ISO. Be sure to use IS, if you don't use a tripod, and be super smooth with that shutter button. If you don't have good, strong light then you may run into problems with shake, noise or lack of DOF.

BTW, part of the problem with my shot, above, is that by focusing on the body, half my DOF is wasted on the other side of the body, behind the top surface. That means that my useful DOF here is actually only 2.4mm in total, not 4.8mm. To be really smart I should have focused a couple of mm short of the body, or at least towards the bak of the body, slightly closer to me, which would have given me more DOF to cover the wings, while still keeping the body sharp enough.

 

[tdodd]

I had another go this afternoon, this time using a 32mm macro tube and a tripod. This is the full frame at 400mm, with the tube, 1/320, f/8, 800 ISO. I focused manually through the viewfinder.

 

[swag72]

That is a great explanation and example Tim. Thank you so much for taking the time to post the pics and the details.

Would there be any merit in using flash with the 100-400mm combo? I am looking at getting a 430exii I think and I am looking at using it the way I have seen others, which is off shoe cord and connected to the lens hood. I know that a ring flash would be more ideal but hey!

So, if I used the flash and the 100-400 would I be able to get a shutter speed that would eliminate camera shake and a large enough DoF to maximise all over focus?

Would the flash reach from the min focussing distance of 1.8m to my subject is my first question I suppose?

 

[tdodd]

TBH I've not tried flash with this sort of thing. I think you'd need to watch for harsh shadows and unusual specular highlights - little white speckles everywhere. Both my examples were shot using natural daylight and this second example was shot at "only" 1/320 and I think it is plenty sharp enough. I have not added any sharpening beyond Lightroom defaults.

I shot this with a tripod, so the camera was steady enough, and a settled butterfly doesn't move much, so 1/320 was fine for this. Even so, if you have steady hands, the 2 stop IS of the 100-400 should let you shoot at 400mm and 1/160 without noticeable shake.

If you do want to use flash, at f/8 and 100 ISO the 430 EX should have a range of 43/8 = 5.4m, if aimed directly at the subject, so plenty of power to light something under 2m away. Of course, if you were to bounce or diffuse the light, which I think would be adviseable, then your range would reduce somewhat, but even if you lost 2 stops of light the range would still be 2.7m, and that's for full flash illumination, not just a bit of fill. If you wanted to use f/11 then the flash range would be reduced to 43/11 = 3.9m, which is still over double the distance you need for direct illumination. Of course, you can always bump the ISO to buy back more distance. Add 2 stops to the ISO to double the range.

The thing is, you'll want the lighting to look natural, so if you are intending to use flash you need to figure out how to mix it with ambient light, sympathetically, or how to provide even illumination of the scene if you want the flash to be the dominant light source. Macro type lighting isn't really my thing, so hopefully someone else can step in with some constructive input. Me, I'd rather stick to strong daylight

 

[HoppyUK]

Sara, you've arrived at the logical solution - flash. It brings it's own complications but at least you will get sharp images, with as much DoF as you can get before diffraction. Macro photographers often go down to f/22 to get depth of field, and accept the trade off in sharpness. You'll have to see for yourself.

Flash also kills camera shake pretty much, even though your shutter speed will not be faster than 1/250sec. The flash duration becomes your effective shutter speed, and that will not be longer than about 1/1000sec on full power, and more likely 1/5000 - 1/10000sec a lot of the time. The flash alters duration to adjust exposure, just like a shutter in that respect, but a heck of a lot faster.

There a bit here about how a focal plane shutter works so you'll understand what is going on, and how high speed flash sync works http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=99841#up_understandshutter

Edit: crossed post with Tim. Yes, flash brings it's own lighting problems but they are all solvable, ultimately, if not easily. Macro is a whole new discipline but the first priority is to get good and reliable sharp focus and flash is usually the easiest way to get that as it solves the two problems of low light and camera shake and/or subject movement in one.

 

[tdodd]

Here are a couple of butterfly examples shot with on camera flash. They're rather poor examples in terms of composition but you can see how effective the lighting was. These were shot indoors in a large, walkthrough, tropical butterfly display....

and here's an example when on camera flash goes horribly wrong. Note the awful flash shadow and the way the wings have almost acted like a mirror, reflecting oddly back to the camera, with a sort of glittery effect.....

 

[swag72]

Would I be right in thinking that using flash with a diffuser would help to aviod reflected back light?

Cheers for the flash stuff Rich - I have put it off for too long - I am going to HAVE to buy a flash!!! Then comes a whole host of even more dumb questions!! I need to read about the high speed synch stuff as I keep seeing that you won't get above 1/250 shutter speed with it, then couple that with high speed synch and I am totally confused!

 

[HoppyUK]

Would I be right in thinking that using flash with a diffuser would help to aviod reflected back light?

Yes and no. The problem with Tim's pic above, is that the flash is firing square on to the wings which are reflecting the light back like a mirror, and casting an obvious shadow behind. A larger diffuser would soften the shadow for sure, and help with the reflection, but if the butterfly was angled to the camera even slightly, that wouldn't be a problem anyway.

Lighting macro subjects is just like lighting normal subjects - imagine a portrait in miniature - but the small scale of everything makes it rather more difficult. Flash brings its own problems but unless you can rely on bright sun all the time, it is your only practical way forward - usually with ring flash. With normal on camera flash, it is often hard to get the light how you want it or where you want it, and that big lens you're using will probably get in the way.

I'm not big into macro and rarely do close bugs and stuff, but I do like butterfly hunting and flowers. If that rings a bell with you, the kit I use is a 70-200 zoom with extension tubes on a 40D, with light from a 580EX and this Rayflash Ringflash Adapter http://www.flaghead.co.uk/images/news/0609/NO Issue XXVII Ray of the Rings.pdf I have the earlier version, and although it tends to be sold as a fashion/portrait light, I find it's great for macro and of course I can still use the 580EX for other stuff. Just a thought. I use it with a second 580EX linked by E-TTL, plus a reflector, and you can do a heck of a lot with that.

Cheers for the flash stuff Rich - I have put it off for too long - I am going to HAVE to buy a flash!!! Then comes a whole host of even more dumb questions!! I need to read about the high speed synch stuff as I keep seeing that you won't get above 1/250 shutter speed with it, then couple that with high speed synch and I am totally confused!

If you're getting serious with flash you need to understand focal plane shutters, but it's none too tricky Flash has never been easier, and the latest TTL flash metering systems plus all the wonderful strobist kit you can get has really opened up this stuff.

I could prattle on for ages but would probably go off in the wrong direction and confuse things. But when you have some questions, ask away. There are many skilled macro snappers around here