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dalantech β Butterfly Portrait I
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#blue #butterfly #insect #macro #topaz #white #macrophotography #topazlabs
Published: 2016-05-06 16:05:08 +0000 UTC; Views: 1443; Favourites: 84; Downloads: 0
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Description
Technique: It was a cool day and this butterfly was having a tough time getting it's metabolism going, so shooting it at high magnification was easy. I used an artificial flower to keep it from going black.Tech Specs: Canon 80D (F11, 1/250, ISO 100) + a Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens (about 3x) + a diffused MT-24EX (both flash heads on the Canon flash mount, E-TTL metering). This is a single, uncropped, frame taken hand held.
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Comments: 22
You've captured the fine detail on this butterfly beautifully! If you hadn't said what exactly you were photographing here I wouldn't have guessed as I see so few extremely close up photos of these typically flying bugs. The eye is remarkably hypnotizing, I find myself repeatedly drawn to it. The contrast on the butterfly itself is amazing, I was unaware they had such a mix of whites, blacks and grays! You were holding the camera by hand and working with a likely limited time frame so it's very impressive how well it came out, and explains the few improvements that come to mind. There is a slight bit of blurring that distracts my eyes on the butterfly's eye, head and leg. I also perhaps would choose a slightly different background color, as the yellow takes away from the whites on the butterfly some. Overall an amazing picture, with only a slight blur to distract the eyes and a background shade that I personally find a bit distracting. Great work, particularly for shooting without a tripod to help steady you! If this opportunity presents itself to you again my only suggestions would be a more contrasted background (I find myself thinking a green bracking) and perhaps a tripod if time permits to help eliminate the small amounts of blurring. I give this beautiful photo a 4.5 or so out of 5 for an amazing overall with only a slight distraction taking away from it.
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Thanks for the critique!
I didn't choose green only because it's too common of a color in nature photos. Blue might have been better due to the blue in the butterflies eyes (didn't have anything that color to use though).
The blurring that you mentioned isn't from motion, it's just from the limited amount of depth in a scene like that one. Focus stacking would have been tricky due to the critter moving from time to time.
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You're welcome, I enjoy writing critiques as it makes me truly think about the picture and perhaps I can learn something myself in the process.
I was thinking blue as well but I worried it may mute some of the blacker tones on the moth so I settled on green; even though it is a very used color, I felt it would contrast it the best.Β
Focus stacking I find hard to do even with a tripod and a non moving target so I can appreciate that! I figured it was just the slightest of motion from either you or the bug that caused the blurring. It's amazing how steady your hands are to get such detailed photos with next to no blurring! Browsing through your gallery after I posted this really impressed me! You are able to capture things amazing well at a very high magnification.
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Thanks!
I replied to the post you left on my profile. There is a "trick" to keeping the scene steady:
Left Hand Brace
I've put off writing this tutorial for a while because the technique I'm going to describe falls into a category that I call a "cheap trick" but it's so useful and results in such razor sharp images that I felt it was time to commit it to words. Even though I stumbled onto it on my own I'm sure that I didn't invent this technique -it's probably as old as macro itself.
I do all of my macro hand held (the critters I go after are normally too active for a tripod to be practical) and I'm always looking for a way to brace the camera. I don't crop and composition is important (keeping the camera steady helps me to place the critter where I want it in the frame). Also the flash can't freeze all of the motion in the scene. No matter how short the flash duration is it will never be short enough to give you sharp details if there is a lot of movement. I'm convinced that a lot of the image softness that people blame on diffraction is really nothing more than a form of "macro motion blur".
One tri
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Awesome! I absolutely love really close up shots of insects.
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I love all of your photography; entomologist macro photography is what got me into photography as a young boy in the first place, I don't do any of that any longer since everybody switched to digital, and became their own desktop publisher. Today I concentrate on portrait photography and post-production photomanipulation.
This is my dog Roush mortikye.deviantart.com/art/Roβ¦
Bee's and ants are the perfect utopian societies. it's almost like they've all read Noam Chomsky; we can never achieve that because people are deceptive and self centered; somebody's always trying to kill the queen, or pilfer the granary.
Free will, what a bitch. Β
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Excellent comment and a beautiful dog!
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i was gonna ask how you got it to sit so still for you but seeing how it was cool i can see why loo, but this is an awesome shot i wish i could get that close , but the ones in my gallery are from further away.
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Just have to find them at the right moment.
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yeah and the timing sucks for me when i find them lol
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