flight pics

[ronniethepoo]

hi
have just joined the forum - back to butterflying after spending years pinning them to boards having gassed them with chloroform some 45 years ago

I have been playing with flight shots yet dont see much on the website - perhaps i am missing it
anyone else out there doing the same thing? I'm having great fun and finally better shots - though the photographic compromises dont allow me to get the pin sharp still shot images I see on this site
interested to hear what others are doing

[Pete Eeles]

hi
have just joined the forum - back to butterflying after spending years pinning them to boards having gassed them with chloroform some 45 years ago

I have been playing with flight shots yet dont see much on the website - perhaps i am missing it
anyone else out there doing the same thing? I'm having great fun and finally better shots - though the photographic compromises dont allow me to get the pin sharp still shot images I see on this site
interested to hear what others are doing

Hi Peter ... er ... Ronnie

And welcome to the forums! Yes, collecting is definitely in the form of photography these days!

I don't think anyone here is specialising in butterflies in flight, so await your exploits with anticipation! Getting a pic of a butterfly is difficult enough without an added dimension!

On a more serious note, capturing a butterfly in flight is the only way to capture the upperside of some species - and you'll find some of these on the species pages.

Cheers,

- Pete

[Padfield]

Here's your challenge, Ronnie the Poo!

Get some nice uppersides of:

Small heath
Green hairstreak
Black hairstreak
White-letter hairstreak
Grayling
Wood white
Clouded yellow sp (though these readily show ups during courting/rejection)

Guy

PS - I like your small blue, but this butterfly does enjoy a bit of bronzing, so it's not a critical species.

[Michaeljf]

Ronnie (the poo),
I've only ever normally got 'flying butterflies' photos by accident. Recently I was watching some Orange Tips mating and tried to get some photos of the flying male who was 'around' the female. Most of the photos were pretty much rubbish, and I like to think I know what I'm doing so as far as I'm concerned, any flying butterfly shots are pretty good. This year by fluke I video'd a Peacock alighting on HD video (50 frames per second) and that almost gave a better result. At least the images were nice and sharp. I know HD video should be quite easy to convert into single images.

Stephan Hette was a French artist that popped on these web-pages last year - I don't know if anyone remembers...anyway, Stephane had just published another book on butterflies - and also linked to a number of French artists that based their work around butterflies. There were some 'flying butterfly' images via that site that made me want to weep they were so good. I mean, they were just extroadinarily good images. And I'm used to seeing the standard of images on here.

I think the link below goes to the portfolio (Ghislain Simard?) that impressed me so much last year. Worth a look - lots of phenomonal flying butterfly photos!

Michael

http://la-vie-revee-des-papillons.over- ... o.free.fr/

Stephen Dalton's images are worth looking at too..

http://www.stephendalton.co.uk/gallery_87323.html

[ronniethepoo]

thanks for your replies
the 2 websites mentioned by Michael confirm my suspicions - most of the shots are flashed!
and most look very staged - which makes me wonder whether they are free flying or caged - i suspect the latter
funnily enough guy I got some green hairstreak shots yesterday
and some nice blues today -not checked up if they are chalkhill or commons, caught in the act
v dull so had to go 1600 iso
want em endangered? -marsh frits as well today, and adonis

[FISHiEE]

This is the online portfolio of a mate of mine in Provence. He does from time to time do some wilde in-flight stuff:

http://www.ephotozine.com/user/celestun-14268

Some of the best stuff (in flight or otherwise) I have ever seen. I have tried to get swallowtails in flight where he goes but got frustrated very quickly. He's fortunate that most of the butterflies you see there are just in his back garden (the a**e!)

I had another friend that specialised in high speed flash set up with laser triggers etc. and did a lot of butterflies which although stunning was very artificial looking and with a black background. Every fine hair and scale of an adonis blue in full flight pin sharp for example and taken at 10fps he had every wing position imaginable. He had clouded yellows (and I forget what other species) but the blues were just incredible.

Here's a link to his website which has some other in flight images of other insects/spiders plus birds and some other 'propper' stuff. He used to be at a rival camera club near me and always beat me in competitions. He's left now though, so I have a bit more of a chance

[ronniethepoo]

brilliant pics, Fishee - depressing also!
it does seem like all with flash?
I cant see any way round flash to get enough depth of field at 1/3200 sec, and suspect that what i am trying to achieve (ie non-flashed wild butterflies) is impossible with current affordable technology
and i think I will have to be happy with sharpish, limited focal depth pics
trouble is best wing spreads are on flying away not taking off - which needs a good guess of both horizontal and vertical trajectory
still, its all part of the fun

[FISHiEE]

The shots in the first link would be 99.9% without flash. I have never seen the guy use one.

And yes they are stunning and at the same time depressing! Especially when I compare shots I have taken standing next to him!

[FISHiEE]

One thing to bear in mind is that swallowtails glide a lot (IN france at least) with wings spread wide open in the thermals, so they are easier(relatively) than say a blue which is flapping it's wings.

You should be able to view the EXIF data in the images to get settings. I do see in some he does actually use flash, but not all. I think he must have bought one since I was last out there.

[contrary]

Hi all, first post here now I see I have some competiton
So having been to the workshop and got a lot more tips from all the speakers (thanks very much everyone btw) I was wondering if I could ask some tips for my no-longer-secret project - photoing the upperside of a butterfly that normally doesn't show.

Let me start by saying I've only had my DSLR since january with no experience beforehand of photography, and it is only since the workshop day I've ventured regularly into Av or Tv modes on my camera ie. I did not know anything about depth of field etc before. Here you are probably thinking "how does this novice expect to get such impossible shots?" and you're quite right I don't really but I'm willing to give it a go as like Ronnie says it's good fun, and I might get lucky one day. Here's hoping

Anyway what I tried so far was setting the shutter speed to 1/2000 or 1/4000 and the ISO to 200/400 and firing away towards any flitting insect. Obviously the problem comes with getting it in focus and for this I can only think it is practising where to focus for how far away you are likely to be from the butterfly when it flies. One thing I took away from the course was that a higher f-number like 22 would give me a better depth-of-field ie. more in focus. Is this correct? And if so is it impossible to control this and shutter speed at the same time? As I'd like to have a fast speed but trying to get a lot in focus. I guess if things were this easy it would already be done, no?

My main point was - what do people on here think are the best settings for me to use to attempt this kind of flying photography?

I think my best so far is this green hairstreak:

Green Hairstreak (female?)

and this was my only one of some clouded yellow species that I was very lucky with although rather out of focus:

Clouded Yellow

Keep up the great photos everyone - the pics on this website are what inspired me to get a camera and I hope one day to be able to take a few as good as I see every time I log on to UKButterflies.
Cheers

[ronniethepoo]

Hi contrary
I like your green hairstreak - and it is bettter than my shot!
I do think here is a huge divide here - there are some amazing photos from amazing photographers, and the emphasis seems to be on photographic excellence
my remit is more humble - to get the shot - and to get one as good as is possible
though i am not (yet) into remote triggers
my own kit is a simple domestic camera - with a difference - a casio excilim 20 which shoots 40fps with a pre-roll facility - pre the trigger and you capture what was coming through the lens 1/2 sec or so ago
ie when the subject took off
and of course the lens quality is rubbish, because it is being asked to do too much, and it is cheap (though now discontinued)
but it gets the shot
my orginal query was to see if there are any other alternatives (or if anyone else is doing the same)
and yes, at f22 depth of field will be much greater, but at high shutter speeds this is likely to be a physical/optical impossibility

as fishee says, the swallowtails are gliders - there is a huge difference in wing speed between the species - with the skippers it needs at least 1/3500, and the possibility of panning and focusing manually would seem immense - unachievable?
either that, or it might need thousands of shots to get one in focus
with my camera i rattle off maybe 2000 shots in an hour, of which one or two might be nice (by my standards)
i cannot imagine how many shots are needed to capture a small fast flyer in full flight by simply snapping at butties in the air - again interesting to know
and you need plenty of butterflies - which with fast flyers, or rarities, might take months
I am now playing with upping the iso setting to get the freeze - but noise really becomes an issue
I have not explored the HD video option though I doubt whether individual frames would be better than my rapid-fire stills - anyone tried?
one thing i have ignored is the 240 fps video mode of my camera - might give it a whirl on some blues later - I'll do a youtube link if I get anything

has anyone flight pics of skippers?
pete

[Padfield]

has anyone flight pics of skippers?

My school sends students and teachers out on voluntary projects in India (http://www.beausoleil.ch/site/?p=453), and naturally they come back with photos of butterflies for me to identify. One student, Fred, got this nice shot of a common gull (Cepora nerissa) and hadn't even noticed the Indian skipper (Spialia galba - a relative of our red-underwing skipper) zooming in like an Exocet missile!



Detail:



So it can be done - even by accident!

Guy

[FISHiEE]

I might have to give this a go now the subject has been brought up

I think the best and easiest method is to select a flower/plant/perch that is well seperated from the background to first get an uncluttered background. Hopefully said perch has a butterfly on it You can then focus on the flower head from some distance (with good distance to any background this will still give a clean background to the image) to give you plenty of space around the flower for the butterfly to fly into. This will also give reasonable depth of field around the flower with not too high an F stop and therefore ISO to get high shutter speed. You can then crop in on the resulting shot. This is incidentally how I try to photograph Hummingbird and Bee Hawk Moths. Probably best with a telephoto lens initially rather than a macro when working at distance. You can then get cocky and in close with a macro once you've got some shots with the 'easy' setup first

You can then set the camera to machine gun mode and fire at will! Hopefully at some point in the sequence the butterfly will take off and you'll get some shots

Also, butterflies courting are quite predictable, and you can focus on a female Orange Tip for example and the males will fly around the female for some time, so from a distance you can set the focus on the female and keep the male in the frame as well. I have tried this with Moroccan Orange Tips a little and with practice I think you could get some excellent shots that way.

The shots below are so-so, but were taken in really poor light and I only tried for a couple minutes. ISO 1600, F4.5 at 1.1m gave not bad depth of field. 1/2500s. These is about 1/6 of the full image.

[Paul Wetton]

You need a good DSLR to gun sufficient shots off when waiting for a butterfly to take off. My Canon 450D only fires at around 3.5 frames per second and then only 6 or 7 shots before the transfer rate to the card stops it from working.

I tried with Clouded Yellow at Hope Gap last year and obtained loads of fresh air shots and loads of butterflies sitting on the ground. They took off when the camera stopped.

I managed a couple of half decent efforts. Here's one.

Take off time for Clouded Yellow

[David M]

Excellent and educational stuff from all concerned.

This is a most interesting topic and any pictures provided must by nature be won via much skill and patience in the field.

This is one butterfly shot you can't fake!

[Michaeljf]

Very nice photos by FISHiEE, I would call them a lot better than 'so-so'.

For me the starting point would be the speed you're trying to take the shot at - whenever photographing Red Kites, Dolphins and sporting shots generally I would switch my camera to TV (time value) and look for a speed that'll stop the object, regardless of whether I then have the skill to focus the camera on the object. Unless you're photographing Hummingbird Hawkmoths (below) then a speed of 2000 or 2500 frames per second should be sufficient. On a sunny day this it should be easy to get this speed with a reasonable ISO, say 800 or even 1000. All the newer Canon cameras (I can't speak for other makes) don't really have a problem with grain using ISO's at that level (in my opinion) and there's always programmes that you can use to reduce the noise after taking the shot.

Multiple-frame photography comes into it's own often with sports photography. As mentioned, Casio Exilim do a range of cameras (quite a reasonable price) that'll take 40 or 50 frames per second, though they have tended to keep these to bursts of 30 fps. That should be plenty for butterflies taking off, but the problem with Casios is they're not really designed for insect photography. I don't think they'll match a good macro.

I don't think you need to be going to apertures of f22. What you'll get is more clutter behind the butterfly. As mentioned, you will struggle to get to that F-stop with a fast speed anyway.

The bottom line, as previously stated, still comes down to a lot of trial and error and a lot of photographs that may not be much good. The Hummingbird Hawkmoth below was shot at an ISO of 1000 at a shutter speed of 1/3200 second (I ended up with an aperture fo F5.6), but these moths are a lot more predictable than butterflies in their movements (even then you end up with a lot of shots you don't use).

I'm quite tempted to do a bit more trial-and-error myself this weekend!

Michael

[Padfield]

This is one butterfly shot you can't fake!

Oh yes you can...



I'm glad no one is talking of actually inciting butterflies to fly, to get that shot, though... You have to wait it out and get lucky.

Guy

[David M]

This is one butterfly shot you can't fake!

Oh yes you can...

LOL! So that's what you get up to on those cold, dark Swiss nights in winter?

[Michaeljf]

I'm glad no one is talking of actually inciting butterflies to fly, to get that shot, though... You have to wait it out and get lucky. Guy

Don't let Felix see that thought...

[Bill S]

Mostly out of experimental interest, I managed to get these two which I was quite pleased about in April and more recently this Bordered Bee Hawk moth (not sure if it's narrow or broad). But it's just for fun and as a record shot in the case of the moth. I have no clue how to set the camera up to use flash in order to freeze the action, so there's some interesting reading there.

Bill