flight pics

[ronniethepoo]

sorry fishee, those pics are certainly not so-so's
i was trying to hint at this earlier - standards hvae to be different for flight pics, or else we'd have to give up!
standards will also be breed dependant, as mentioned before - the little fast jobs needing higher shutter speeds (at least 1/4k for skippers) with consequent loss of depth of field - flying faster and less latitude - double whammy!!
very good to hear some of you taking up the gauntlet
I'll be very interested to know the man-hour per shot ratio
mine is very good with my excilim, but unfortunately I know that none of mine will be anything like as good as yours
it's the other end of the compromise - ease versus ultimate picture quality
i am trying to get flying shots of all the uk butterflies - think it would be a lifetime project using current slrs - though no doubt you guys will surprise me and prove me wrong!!
and the sun's coming out - I'm off!

[contrary]

Great shots everyone - nice to see what is possible.
Also thanks for the tips on settings. My conclusions so far are:
1) I'm going to put up the ISO next time to 800 (seems 1600 can still get top results too) which should enable a bigger d-o-f as I'm not sure I'd notice any noise or not in my pics.
2) Practice, practice with different settings, and on easier butterflies.
3) Try out the continuous shoot mode though my camera gives around 3 per second - I'm amazed cameras can do 30+fps like yours Ronnie - incredible.
4) Explore HD video and see whether the stills are better or not than photos.

It's actually really interesting looking at the flying insect - for some reason I'd never considered that their wings could flap below the horizontal so I thought one Brimstone I took was flying upside down They look so strange with wings in this position.

Fishiee - Can I ask what you mean by an uncluttered background? Your lovely shots seem to be taken at ground level with nothing in the b/g until the trees or whatever - I presume you'd not recommend what I did and point camera at the ground from a standing up position? Does this clutter the b/g and/or make focussing on the flower head harder? Any other tricks of the trade?

Thanks.

[Paul Wetton]

If you use HD video and take a frame grab it will be useful if you have a video camera that has manual settings and you can set the shutter speed like on a DSLR then you can choose a fast shutter speed over 1/1000th of a second. Otherwise the video grabs will probably be blurred like using a DSLR with a slower shutter speed.

[FISHiEE]

Fishiee - Can I ask what you mean by an uncluttered background? Your lovely shots seem to be taken at ground level with nothing in the b/g until the trees or whatever - I presume you'd not recommend what I did and point camera at the ground from a standing up position? Does this clutter the b/g and/or make focussing on the flower head harder? Any other tricks of the trade?

To get the uncluttered background you want a good distance between the butterfly and any background foliage so that it's nicely out of focus and not distracting. If you're shooting with a small sensor compact camera this is more difficult as the smaller sensor gives much greater depth of field. Shooting further away will exagerate this further, as will increasing the aperture (well technically decreasing it by increasing the F number!). Shooting down from above makes it hard to get a good distance to any distracting background foliage, but I guess shows the open wings off better, so try and find some flowers with long stems to help give you some distance

Shooting level, or from below will make it easier to get the uncluttered background. It also pays to have a good look through the viewfinder to frame the shots as best you can to get any potential distractions out of the way by either altering the position of the camera or moving the offending bits of grass etc. Also, check the shots on the LCD as sometimes something that looks not too bad through the viewfinder comes out really bad in the final shot such as a bright patch of ground, dead bright plant stem, flower head etc. and you can then adjust things to get them out of the shot.

Hope this helps

And hope we get some sun this weekend to try myself

[ronniethepoo]

fishiee
here's another sort of background - have discovered today that i can get much better quality in supermacro - 2 or 3 inches away
and of course we then get the aperture and depth of field
still not slr quality, but a different perspective

[ronniethepoo]

Guy
here's your green hairstreak!
I know it's not up to your incredibly high stills standard, but it's gonna be the best I can achieve with my gear!

as an aside, anyone into hi speed video!
I presume others get the same interest from seeing things from a different perspective - here's one to go with the brimstone still
- a bit dark i know, but I tried to keep the shuttter speed high - probably a mistake!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zknfQQqpCdE

[Padfield]

Nice! That GH upperside (that's a female, as I'm sure you know) is something you won't get a picture of any other way and we should start getting these pics onto the species pages in place of the 'no image available' stickers!! You can begin by cropping suitably and putting pictures in the species-specific albums. If Pete and Gruditch think they're of the required standard they will do the necessary (they do apply quite high standards for the species pages).

I don't have any 'incredibly high skills', Ronnie. I'm 'point and shoot', but living where I do I just have incredibly wonderful things to point and shoot at!! I don't think my camera's really good enough for proper flight pictures.

Guy

[Pete Eeles]

Nice! That GH upperside (that's a female, as I'm sure you know) is something you won't get a picture of any other way and we should start getting these pics onto the species pages in place of the 'no image available' stickers!! You can begin by cropping suitably and putting pictures in the species-specific albums. If Pete and Gruditch think they're of the required standard they will do the necessary (they do apply quite high standards for the species pages).

Sounds good to me!

Cheers,

- Pete

[ronniethepoo]

guy
wasnt meaning your personal incredibly high standards - (equally I now dont mean you dont have high standards!)
i meant the websites's - I wont be able to get the scale perfect shots that grace the site's pages
I too am a happy snapper with my f stops hidden away with my olympus OM1 and zuiko lenses - now they DID give sharp piccies! - but now sitting gathering dust!
I will get cropping and submitting!
pete

[Padfield]

guy
wasnt meaning your personal incredibly high standards - (equally I now dont mean you dont have high standards!)

And there was me thinking I was getting a compliment!!

You're right. The standard of photography on this site is humbling. But in my opinion, if a photograph illustrates something important that no other photographs show, it is worthy of inclusion even if it is not scale-perfect. At least until a better shot of the same thing comes along...

Guy

[ronniethepoo]

Guy
have been playing since - and have come to the conclusion that at the moment there is no universal alternative - I can find no other camera make on the maket with pre-roll, which means that there isnt much oportunity for me to upgrade and get those scale-perfect shots. - so its DSLR for the species that have predictable behaviours, or chance, or low quality with the exilim
Had fun at Martins Down today and got some useful pics, including your small heath uppersides
the big issue with the exilim is noise - at hi ISO settings noise is terrible - 1600 is hopeless. 800 isnt too bad for big butterflies that dont need to be magnified as much - but diddy butties get very pixelated, especially the high speed ones
we're really hitting the buffers with the technology
unfortunately the Exilim models got slated for doing nothing exceptionally well despite the fact they do something that no other camera does (to my knowledge) Shame the concept hasnt been developed further !
Any-one got any further thoughts?