The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical
About This Image
A few days ago, I saw one of these in our garden, grabbed the 70-200 macro and tried to photograph it. It wouldn’t let me within 15 feet of it. So when this one showed up yesterday, I grabbed my birding camera with a 200-600 zoom and 2x TC to try photographing it with significantly more success.
Feedback Requested
I’m looking for any advice on framing and depth of field suggestions for this kind of photography. With the lens and TC I used, I stayed with wide open as that is already f/13, so iso is starting to creep up quite a bit. The aspect ratio is a bit unusual on these and I used it dictated on the combination of the flower and the butterfly. I could probably modify it to a 4x5 for purists.
The little fluff of pink in the background is an out of focus partially open flower and I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it around the fine features it was behind, so I trimmed it a bit (it wasn’t actually centered) and left it there-is it a distraction?
Technical Details
View from above
Camera: SONY ILCE-1
Lens: FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS + 2X Teleconverter
Focal length: 1200mm
Shutter speed: 1/5000s
Aperture: f/13
ISO: 5000
Head-on View
Camera: SONY ILCE-1
Lens: FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS + 2X Teleconverter
Focal length: 1200mm
Shutter speed: 1/5000s
Aperture: f/13
ISO: 5000
Hand held. Preprocessing in DxO PureRaw5, further processing and cropping in LR & PS CC.
Big lenses for butterflies may work better than standard macro lenses. For the first image, the head and apical region of the thorax is softer due to the limited DOF. Never be afraid to use a smaller aperture for any type of close-up. I used to think that way about keeping the ISO as low as possible, but I find that noise can be handled better with these newer digital cameras. Getting the butterfly lined up perfectly to the plane of focus is difficult to do with big focal length lenses, so again go with a smaller aperture. What you have in focus is not bad and details are very crisp. The BG is perfect for this type of shot. Swallowtails do quiver their wings when nectaring and that justifies your 1/5000 sec shutter speed. The other view has a wonderful head on pose and wish for more light in those shadows. Still, there’s some nice details captured here as well. Have you thought about using some extension tubes to get you closer to the subject? Other than vignetting, I have used them successfully for big bug photography. I think the results you got are encouraging and hopefully more Western tigers will show up for round 2. Well done!..Jim
Dennis: I love coneflowers and swallowtail butterflies so this is a winning combo for me. I like the symmetry of the first with the wings matching the flower and I like seeing the head of the butterfly and flower in the second. I might try to bring up a little more shadow detail in the flower head on the second but it’s still pretty darn good as is. Nice work with the long lens rig. >=))>
Dennis, the revised version looks great. I’m enjoying the subtle “crown” of the second flower in that view. The extra working distance of a long lens is always nice. It’s interesting that some individuals will tolerate closer approaches while others seem much more flighty. Head on views are always challenging because of the shallow dof. If you have it, a bit more space on the left and right would be nice in the head on view and maybe a crop to square, with less space up top.
