Yes very true. In those situations I do little more than dust removal, contrast, saturation etc. and cropping. No cloning other than that.

I have a pic in this years calendar

I never said I paid for photoshop

I think elements has a lot of the important features though and is quite reasonably priced.

I use Capture one LE to convert my RAW files to TIFF and then take over with photoshop from there. I have downloaded a trial copy of lightroom but not yet installed it.

If it's that low I can use the monopod laying flat no problem or handheld is pretty stable when you're laying flat on the floor. The sigma 150 has a tripod collar so you have a mini tripod for that low built in :) My very old slik tripod never went to ground level. Only down to about 70cm due to the...

I definitely would be one for photoshopping. I am sure a much better job can be done in photoshop than in camera. I just set everything to neutral in the camera (sharpening, saturation, contrast adjustments etc.) and then sort it out in photoshop. Sometimes it just means a simple crop and a bit of s...

And if anyone else is interested in Monopods I won a Velbon UP-4000 at a raffle at a photography comp a year or so back. While not as good as my Manfrotto 679B it is still pretty strong and at least half the weight. I've taken it abroad a few times when weoight was an issue and it served me well. I ...

Congratulations to Gruditch. Well deserved

Had sunshine here in Kent. Saw my first Comma of the year and Common Lizard

Actually I must admit I wasn't 100% sure it was a brown argus. It was amongst a load of chalkhill blues and a lot smaller, so Brown Argus was my guess. I should look to improve my ID skills for this year. Perhaps I need to get hold of Adrian's book

Thanks for pointing this out

Thanks for the kind comments. I'm just waiting for the 'Butterflies and water' category ;) Might give a few of you guys an incentive to get up early :) I have loads of them but this is probably the most impressive. I think mostly because the species so small it makes the dew drops look that much big...

I definitely prefer early morning or late evening. Last year I had great success with blues just after sunrise (around 6am). Cold and inactive, often covered in dew and with superb bright lighting. If you have a good site with lots of shady areas, you can have several hours of this as the sun hits d...

Superb specimen with not a scale out of place and a very nice picture of it indeed!

Hatched one of these out myself when I was a kid and have recently reared and hatched indiam moon moths.

Chalkhill Blue from the North Downs. Just emerged so didn't know what it's wings were for yet

Subject and camera handheld

John

Superb shot from eccles!

Don't tend to photograph butterflies with people but think I have the odd one in the archives

Shot with sigma 70-300 while my 150 was away for repairs and so not much DOF and plenty of camera shake as it's not much cop on a monopod.

Ok here they are. As I said not the best in the world!

I am at work right now.

The photographs were really quite bad but I can try to find them and upload them when I'm at home. Might not be too bad on a computer screen.

Actually thinking back it was 2006 not last year.

Interesting. I photographed one of these last year in Kent and nobody I knew could say for sure it was an aberation of a White Admiral. I wasn't sure as both the upper side and underside were different to the normal white admiral. This now clears up the mystery. I thought what I saw was larger than ...

Well done to the winner. It got my vote

The others in the top 3 (or 4 this time) were also quality photos but I thought Paul's was the better camouflaged in it's surroundings to the others and so that's why it was my winner.

I use a Manfrotto 234RC head on mine lightly clamped so that it's free but not too free. I can then adjust the angle of the head without moving my finger from the shutter button. I think you would have to for the trigger grip heads? I have considered one of the trigger grips for my tripod though but...

Isn't it difficult to kep your shadow etc. out of the shot and off the butterfly even with that lens?