Some butterfly stacks.

Callophrys

Callophrys

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Dave
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I visited a local site on Thursday evening to catch some butterflies once they'd settled for the night. Although the sun actually hadn't set while I was taking these it had disappeared behind the trees, so the light was very flat.
Most of the stacking was done with Helicon (still using free trial), but a couple came out better with Affinity. Helicon is much faster, but doesn't compensate as well for subject movement between shots. These were all tripod mounted, but there was just enough breeze to move the butterflies slightly, and even a movement of less than a millimetre produced a horrible ghost image with Helicon whereas Affinity was able to correctly align the shots. There was some halo on most of these, but this was fairly easy to correct.

Meadow Brown (Maniola jurtina) by Dave O'Brien, on Flickr

Marbled White (Melanargia galathea) by Dave O'Brien, on Flickr

Marbled White (Melanargia galathea) by Dave O'Brien, on Flickr

Marbled White (Melanargia galathea) by Dave O'Brien, on Flickr

Marbled White (Melanargia galathea) by Dave O'Brien, on Flickr

All taken with the Canon R5 + 180mm f3.5L macro.
 
Impressive Dave (y)

BTW I use Affinity for stacking too. I've not found better.
And it beat CS5 hands down.
 
Cheers Cobra!

I was tempted to get Helicon after the trial period, but I think I'll stick with Affinity. I just wish it was faster though!
 
Very pretty. Do you put a colour card behind the butterfly to get such smooth background?
 
Rustydon said:
Beautiful studies of the two species taken against lovely clean backgrounds, Dave (y)

Russ
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Cheers Russ!
Lemaildetom said:
Very pretty. Do you put a colour card behind the butterfly to get such smooth background?
Click to expand...
No, I can see why you'd think that, but the backgrounds are completely natural. A combination of the narrow FOV of the 180mm lens and the wide aperture used (f4.0 or 4.5).
 
How long do the stacks take. Doesn't the butterfly flit away!?
Mel
 
Mel_P said:
How long do the stacks take. Doesn't the butterfly flit away!?
Mel
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The R5 will automatically take the sequence of shots in seconds, but these didn't fly away because they'd settled down for the night. A number of species will roost quite openly on flower heads or grass stems and provide plenty of opportunities for sunset or sunrise photography.
 
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