Closer to Nature

vickylou

vickylou

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Vicky
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An enjoyable set to view Vicky. My preference is for #2 and #4 as you get a good view of the whole insect with all of the wings and the head in focus. And as well as that the background in #2 is very pleasing to my eye, both the surface it is on and the further background, and in #4 the colours and textures of the wings are beautiful.

I might have cropped both these images a little differently, with a bit more space in front of the subject rather than behind it. Proportions a bit more like this perhaps (and yes, I cheated with this one by stretching the background. It's a technique I use with my own closeups sometimes when I can't get the composition to work just by cropping).


NOT MY IMAGE - vickylou - butterfly No 2 - bk7w28ne by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#4 might even give you a nice portrait or even squarish crop. Something like this perhaps.


NOT MY IMAGE - vickylou - Butterfly No 4 - 3x87oj2a by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


I'm interested that you used flash for all of them except the most close-up one, #3, which used a fairly slow shutter speed of 1/40 sec. And I notice that #5 used an even slower shutter speed of 1/20 sec, even though it used flash, and it used ISO 500 too. And #1 used a higher ISO, 640, although it too used flash. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against slow shutter speeds, even when using flash, and nothing against moving away from base ISO, even when using flash - I do all these things myself. But I do them for very particular reasons and I'm curious as to what your thinking was about these particular exposure settings.

btw, do you use a tripod or any other support? And does the lens you used have image stabilisation?

While preparing this post I bumped into some nice flower images on your Flickr photostream. I hope we're going to see some of them here. :)
 
Thank you very much for your help. The images were taken in a glass house and outside was very overcast and the butterflies tended to settle in areas with a lot less light. In the darker areas I was struggling to get enough detail without the flash. The images were a lot flatter with less contrast, I dialed my external speedlite down as I did not want thus to be the deciding factor in the exposure but to fill in the darker areas.

I used a tripod for all but one of them, I am limited asy macro lens is only 60mm with no IS/VC so hand held in that light I would have needed a lot higher iso and would have had to use a shalloer dof than I wanted to get hand held shutter speeds. If I will the lotto I would love a longer macro lens with IS.

The hand held one I sat on the floor and kept my arms as close to me as possible to prevent camera shake.

Ideally with slower shutter speeds I would not want flash as it does seem to be more of the main light in the exposure, but I am inexperienced and was not sure a better was to get the detail with the light I had.

I didn't use base iso as the shutter speed were really low and I didn't want the butterfly to fly off, or close it's wings. I was concerned with noise if I used much higher iso and no flash as I am inexperience at noise reduction in PP.

Thankyou for the advice with the cropping. I think you perspective does look more pleasing to the eye. When composing I do try to think of angles which make the image more interesting rather than just the butterfly in the centre.
 
Ah, thanks, I understand better now.

vickylou said:
The images were a lot flatter with less contrast, I dialed my external speedlite down as I did not want thus to be the deciding factor in the exposure but to fill in the darker areas.
Click to expand...

The trouble is that the flash has most impact on the nearer areas (like the subject, typically) and less on areas further away, which tend to be the darker areas, in the background. That is the reason I often raise the ISO and/or use slow exposures when using flash in dim conditions, for example working underneath dense tree cover on heavily overcast days.

I use the flash to provide illumination for the subject and its immediate surroundings, with the short duration of the flash helping to "fix" the subject and its immediate surroundings in what may be a longish exposure.

I use the higher ISO and/or longer exposure to bring up the darker more distant areas that are illuminated mainly/only by (not much) natural light.

I often dial down the flash in these circumstances (sometimes by quite a lot) so I use a mixture of natural and flash light on the subject. As well as this negative flash exposure compensation, when using Av I use negative exposure compensation to avoid the shutter speed going too slow. Quite often in these circumstances I'll use manual mode to get the same effect as I sometimes find it a bit easier to get my head around it when I'm directly setting the shutter speed rather than getting at it indirectly through exposure compensation.
 
Very nice vicky love the colour and background in the second one and nick's crop really shows it off
Only thing I hope you don't mind me saying it that the butterfly's wings have a bit missing but thats just me nitpicking
Number 3 is my favourite though great composition
You are right using a tripod i go quite often to the butterfly house myself at the zoo and always use a tripod
I don't use flash but that's just me
I tend to try to find a butterfly in a good position and concentrate on that sometimes I only find one thats in nice light but if with a bit of luck it comes out nicely it its worth it:)
 
Thank you, the bit on the wing irritated me too, but I guess it's part of nature. I was just please it landed close enough for me to photograph :)
 
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