Few photos from the last few days. -comments welcome

[Eris]

All taken in our field Nr. Petworth West Sussex Using an Olympus 510 handheld, no flash. New to butterfly photography, so comments welcome.



Female common blue



Underside of female common blue



Brown Argus



Small copper, Brown Argus and Common blue female feeding on corn marigold (If I had a wide angled lens Icould have fitted in half a dozen meadow browns and a few gatekeepers and a skipper as well, but chose these three.)



Small Copper



Brown Argus underside



Small skippers ( I presume, willing to be corrected!)

[eccles]

Quite a nice assortment. I especially like the brown argus underside. But to my eyes they're all overexposed and several of them have burned out highlights. I notice in the exif data you have +1 exp correction applied to them all.

[Eris]

Quite a nice assortment. I especially like the brown argus underside. But to my eyes they're all overexposed and several of them have burned out highlights. I notice in the exif data you have +1 exp correction applied to them all.

Thanks,

I'll take a look at the exposure and see about correcting it next time. I have to admit I was just clicking away... providing they weren't looking blurred around the edges I was happy. Still trying to understand F's and ISO's and suchlike.

[Rogerdodge]

Eris

There are some great images here.
All, however, are very slightly overexposed. If you look at the white fringing to the wings, you will see no detail left in there.
As Eccles so rightly pointed out, you have the exposure compensation set to +1. You would probably be better setting it to -1. This may involve you lightening later in your editing software, but will save the detail in the light areas.

Here comes the controversial bit-

You have, as with all DSLRs, a pretty little screen on the back that lets you view your photo after you have taken it.
This function serves one purpose, and one purpose only - gripping off your companions later in the pub when they can see the composition of that competition wining shot you got.

This is why it is otherwise useless-

It does not represent the colour your real photograph the screen is not able to show the range of colours in the actual photograph.
It does not represent the exposure of your photograph. The screen does not have the latitude (ability to display light and dark) of your final image.
It does not represent the sharpness of your final image – you are looking at a tiny JPEG taken from your huge original.
It does show your composition pretty well – but you don't need to check composition as you were looking at that just before you tripped the shutter!
Turn it off, and save battery power!

I learnt this lesson early on in my DSLR ownership. I was at Loch Ruthven in Scotland photographing Slav Grebe. After each shot I zoomed in on the screen and the eye and beak were blurred. I deleted and shot again. No matter how much I tightened the tripod head, or checked the focus, I was not getting that sharpness I wanted. In the end I left (disappointed, and ready to break out my old film camera and put my DSLR on EBay) with a couple of shots still on the camera. Back at my computer I was surprised to see that the shots I had left were sharp. I learnt two lessons that day. One - forget the post-view image, and, Two - delete back at the computer, not in camera.

So - here is what the screen is REALLY for.
You will have an option to display a graph called a histogram.
This is one of the most useful, and underused, features of a DSLR.
Any lines touching the right hand side will mean the detail will be lost in light areas.
You must re-take the photograph with a lower EV (-1 for example).
Any lines to the far left hand side will mean that shadow detail will be too black to hold any detail.
Retake with a higher EV (+1 for example).
The taller the line - the greater the area of loss.
If you have tricky lighting conditions where you have lines at both ends, take shots at -1, 0 and +1. You may even do +2 and -2 as well.
This is called "bracketing", and some cameras will do this automatically for you if you ask it to.
Then pick the best image later after playing around with the various lighting values in your software.

Your camera handles high ISOs very well (low noise values - equivalent to grain with film), so the 800 you have used on all but the last picture would be fine.
This will enable you to use the high shutter speeds handholding an Olympus will demand.
The old 35mm rule of hand holding a reciprocal of the focal length no longer holds true.
This meant that a 200mm lens could be hand held at 1/200 sec and so on. This has to be doubled for Olympus as a 200mm Olympus lens has the field of view of a 400mm lens on 35mm. Thus your limit for hand-holding will be 1/400 for a 200mm lens.
You are also getting twice the depth of field for a similar reson. This is why the background detail in No.1 is a bit obtrusive.
I assume you understand the relationship between aperture and depth of field - if not, please ask, and all will be explained.

You have a good eye for composition, and with proper exposure you future photos will do very well.

There is also slight blur, especially in the beautiful BA side view. I would advocate using a support like a tripod or monopod. It makes a remarkable difference to your photography.

Welcome to a very friendly group. I look forward to your next efforts!

Well done on choosing Olympus. You have got one of the best DSLRs out there. Thank God you didn't make the mistake of going for a Sony!

Blimey – I seem to have rambled on a bit here. Still I hope there is some good stuff in there.

Roger

[JKT]

A few opinions:

It does not represent the sharpness of your final image – you are looking at a tiny JPEG taken from your huge original.

Yes it does - to a certain extent. You have to learn the maximum sharpness it shows and you can delete most with less. It works also reasonably comparing a bunch of pictures. This can sometimes matter on long trips.

It does show your composition pretty well – but you don't need to check composition as you were looking at that just before you tripped the shutter!

The most attention is usually reserved for focus. Seeing the hole composition simultaneously does not really work for me. Besides, some DSLRs only cover part of the final image in the viewfinder.

You will have an option to display a graph called a histogram. This is one of the most useful, and underused, features of a DSLR.

Useful - yes, underused - not bloody likely!

Your camera handles high ISOs very well (low noise values - equivalent to grain with film), so the 800 you have used on all but the last picture would be fine.

I'd rather check that first. ISO 400 is probably fine, but 800 could be a bit noisy - especially if your exposure is a bit under and you have to correct later. In my Canon ( ) the 800 is just OK, but IIRC Olympus was just a bit worse in that respect.

[Eris]

Wow, thanks for all the advice.... Hate to admit it but yes I have a histogram thingy... Nope - not the faintest idea what it really was showing.

And I must have hit the 800 iso by mistake as I usually leave it on 200 or 400 but maybe my OH had been using the camera.
I was using his big lens, a zuiko 140-300 which he bought to do aeroplane photography with, I figured it would let me get closer without disturbing the butterflies, but admit it WAS rather heavy being hand held, he has a monopod and a tripod so I will maybe borrow that. I was thinking of splashing out on a Macro Lens as they seem to get good reviews.

Yes I take a pic, study it mutter about blurring etc and then delete it. Editing software EDITING software? .... Nope I don't photoshop the images, just upload and look at them and crop them down to size.But I do have some pics that I thought were a bit dark so maybe I will take another look at them. I will go an look at the pics on OH's computer as he has photoshop on his one, I don't have it on my laptop.

I have problems getting my head around depth of field, and and focal length. I sort of go by, If it's F5 then it will focus around 5 ' give or take a little bit which is almost certainly bollocks but is easy to remember.

Not a photographer I'm afraid, - I just like taking pictures

[Denise]

Hi Eris,

I love your frankness
I didn't have a clue what I was doing when I started , but you soon get the hang of it.
I set my camera mostly on ISO 100, F8.
For greater depth of field (blurring) use a higher F number.
For faster shutter speed a higher ISO. The rest you learn as you go along but this is a good starting point.
I know this sounds simplistic, but that's me. The easier, the better.
Most of all, have fun with you camera and enjoy the butterflies.

Cheers
Denise

[eccles]

I don't agree that the LCD screen isn't useful for checking sharpness. Use the magnification button to show a portion of the image and scan around the important parts of the shot like a butterfly's eyes. You'll get a pretty good idea if it'll be sharp enough. I can weed out 75% of my bad ones before uploading them to the PC. Since I usually shoot raw, and don't bother with jpgs this saves a lot of time reviewing images on the PC later. I will get a bigger memory card one day.....
I confess I don't use the histogram very much, but I did adjust the screen brightness when I got my camera so that what looks ok there is *about* right when displayed on the PC screen, and that is mostly ok. I also made sure that my PC screen brightness matched that of my printer so that I could judge when and how much to adjust the levels on the PC.
On your current +1 exp, try setting it to -0- at first and see what it looks like.

On the rule of shutter speed vs focal length, this is a good guideline for starters but your Olympus's image stabilisation will often allow you to get away with slower shutter speeds. How much slower depends a lot on how you hold your camera and you need to practice to see just what you can get away with. BTW, 'IS' will not compensate for a moving subject, only for a degree of camera shake.