New Photos (Inflight and Courtship) Look what landed on our bluebells...

Tintin124

Tintin124

Messages
8,826
Name
Bryn
Edit My Images
Yes
This afternoon had a bit of luck as I was shooting bees a Cabbage White Butterfly landed on the next bluebell so quickly turned attention to it and shot...

This is only one I got before it flew off... later would have had a great opportunity to shoot mating and fight males but didn't have time as was going out :(


IMG_7917 by bthomas124, on Flickr

All comments welcome and appreciated.

:ty:
 
Nice one. It's great especially considering it was a one shot opportunity. Looks like the camera's made it a touch blue, I'd add a bit more warmth (although I'm not using a calibrated screen).
 
Tintin124 said:
Always interested Nick... anything to help me improve.
Click to expand...

Here we go.

This is more Clarity and far more Vibrance than I normally use. When working from my own RAWs from the 70D (rather than in this case a screen-scrape) I generally use either no Clarity or +5, and no Vibrance. With my FZ200, I use (personal) import defaults of +10 Clarity and +5 Vibrance. I almost never use Saturation (I read in Martin Evening's Lightroom book that he never uses Saturation, because Vibrance is better, and I think that influenced me.)


Bryn butterfly Lightroom settings 1 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Another thing I almost never use in Lightroom is the tone curve. In this case I couldn't get quite enough from the sliders so I did use a very mild S curve.


Bryn butterfly Lightroom settings 2 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

I have no idea what colour the bluebell should be - they vary so much, but after I'd pulled the image around a bit it seemed a bit dark to me, so I pulled the purple and blue saturation back a bit. I think the increase in red luminance is a mistake. I think I did that when I was trying to remove red fringing (see below) and forgot to reverse it when that didn't work out.

Bryn butterfly Lightroom settings 3 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

I quite probably overdid the sharpening. After all, you will have sharpened the posted version. But FWIW this is what I used. Note the small radius of 0.5. (One of the reasons I do the sharpening for my images in CS2 is that Lightroom won't let me use the 0.3 pixel radius that I like to use - the smallest radius for which I can see any effect.) Coupled with a small Amount, this was quite mild (additional, on top of what you had done) sharpening.


Bryn butterfly Lightroom settings 4 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

I used this to remove the strong blue fringing around the top edge of the flower to the right of the butterfly's eye. I initially set the Purple Hue markers quite wide apart to try to remove red and blue fringing, but removing the red fringing denatured all the reds in the antennae and around the butterfly's head, which is when I turned the Red luminance up to try to compensate for this. That didn't work, so I set the markers close together so as only to affect the blue fringing (and forgot about the change I had made to Red luminance).


Bryn butterfly Lightroom settings 5 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
Last edited:
Tintin124 said:
Look what landed on our bluebells...
Click to expand...
And there was me thinking you finally cracked it and got a red panda :p
Well spotted and captured Bryn (y)

You second edit is better, But Nick's just about cracked it :)
 
Well the 3 some were back this afternoon....

I had camera ready and made lots of fails, but that must be the nature of Inflight photography.

Full set on my Flickr including most of the failures which had the butterflies in frame... I will be deleting them but wanted people to see how hard it is as they are just so erratic and fast.

1. In Flight

Brimstone Courtship-8036 by bthomas124, on Flickr

2.

Brimstone Courtship-8008 by bthomas124, on Flickr

3.

Brimstone Courtship-8009 by bthomas124, on Flickr

4. Courtship

Brimstone Courtship-8021 by bthomas124, on Flickr

5.

Brimstone Courtship-8022 by bthomas124, on Flickr

6. Sneaking up... well flappy wings manically (male)

Brimstone Courtship-8027 by bthomas124, on Flickr

7.

Brimstone Courtship-8032 by bthomas124, on Flickr
 
Thanks @GardenersHelper

Working on the raw this is what I have no come up with following common factors in yours let me know what you think.

In fact everyone let me know what you think.

1. Nicks settings or there abouts

IMG_7917-3 by bthomas124, on Flickr

2. More saturation and vibrance

IMG_7917-4 by bthomas124, on Flickr

Or am I getting this totally wrong....
 
those are fab, especially the ones in flight... and I just LOVE that one on the fence, #8021.. the angle on the dangle is fab and really makes for an excellent picture! I've never seen butterflies like that before... sadly... I've actually not seen many at all... :\ Tres cool, dude! :)
 
Bryn good to see so many of your shots - so good to look through & like Bethy 'the angle on the dangle' & all that - whatever that means :)
 
sunnyside_up said:
those are fab, especially the ones in flight... and I just LOVE that one on the fence, #8021.. the angle on the dangle is fab and really makes for an excellent picture! I've never seen butterflies like that before... sadly... I've actually not seen many at all... :\ Tres cool, dude! :)
Click to expand...

Thanks Bethy

DayDreamer said:
Bryn good to see so many of your shots - so good to look through & like Bethy 'the angle on the dangle' & all that - whatever that means :)
Click to expand...

Thanks John, but I have just noticed I have messed up some of the PP on some of them.... Thought I'd sorted out the noise but some of them still have major issues :arghh:
 
Tintin124 said:
Thanks John, but I have just noticed I have messed up some of the PP on some of them.... Thought I'd sorted out the noise but some of them still have major issues :arghh:
Click to expand...

Noise, sharpening is one of the most difficult aspects to get right in PP.
I've watched so many YouTube videos & still jump from LR to PSE & Noiseware.
Nick does seem to get it right as his shots are always as right as they can be :)
 
Great set of shots as John said the inflight courtship ones are excellent
they are Brimstone butterflies by the way well done catching them I have always found them tricky:)
edit one looks spot on the second has too much saturation
 
Last edited:
Tintin124 said:
@TimmyG what do you think of latest edits?
Click to expand...
The first edit was good. I felt it made the world of difference. I agree with Nick's assessment, the highlights were a bit bright on the subject, however by pulling them right down I felt it left the image looking a little flat. Nick addressed this with the Curves adjustments, but I think it needed to go a bit further than this to bring back the contrast. Usually if I pull down the highlights and increase the shadow slider to even out the light, I will bring back the contrast by increasing the "whites" slider and decreasing the "blacks" (paying careful attention to the histogram to ensure I don't clip the whites and only partially clip the blacks). This usually alters the color so I may either cool it down a touch, reduce the vibrancy or more commonly, de-saturate the problem colour individually (it's usually the yellows). I think you've picked up on this with the next edit. Personally I would have left it at that, but I prefer slightly muted colours. I think it could take a vibrancy boost, but I would knock it back just slightly from the final edit. HTHs

By the way love those in flight shots of the butterfly's rising up into the sky. You could merge the two top ones together just as they are posted and make a rising butterfly tower ;)
 
Had an orange tip in the garden today hopefully it will be back tomorrow and I'll have camera ready. But it is a lot smaller than the brimstones so not to hopeful.
 
TimmyG said:
Usually if I pull down the highlights and increase the shadow slider to even out the light, I will bring back the contrast by increasing the "whites" slider and decreasing the "blacks" (paying careful attention to the histogram to ensure I don't clip the whites and only partially clip the blacks).
Click to expand...

Yes, I often do that - Blacks and Shadows in opposite directions, Whites and Highlights in opposite directions - not always obviously, but quite often. Highlights and Shadows first, then Whites (which seems to bring the colours up) and Blacks. Don't know why I didn't do it this time and used (not much) Curves instead. Very odd.

TimmyG said:
This usually alters the color so I may either cool it down a touch, reduce the vibrancy or more commonly, de-saturate the problem colour individually (it's usually the yellows).
Click to expand...

Very interesting. Noted for future reference and use! (I wonder if that is part of my Choisya issue. I'll have to experiment.:))
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top