Following my initial report on my last visit to
Daneway Banks (26th June), I spent a wet afternoon, yesterday, working through all the photos that I had taken of the mating pair of Large Blues. I found that I had taken 65 photos of the pair, with the Nikon, and 43 with the Lumix. The Nikon pics were all in RAW (NEF) format, whereas I am, so far, only taking JPEGs with the Lumix.
My first step is to view each of the on-screen images and 'weed out' all those that are obviously out-of-focus or motion-blurred, as well as those where foreground grasses have obscured the image. Occasionally, I grant a 'reprieve' for an image that shows some particularly interesting aspect of the subject.
For the Nikon images, I then use my RAW converter software to adjust colour balance and exposure, before comparing the many very similar images at 1:1 size, to select the best out of these groups. After making this selection, I convert the remaining RAW images to JPEG format and file away the RAW originals. For the Lumix images, I copy the original images to a separate folder, where I make a more detailed selection, viewing the images at 1:1 size. Again, I file away the originals, knowing that I can re-visit any particular image, if I decide that I have been too Draconian in my second selection. I work on the basis that hard-disk storage space is now very cheap and there is no need to risk deleting an image that may later turn out to show an interesting detail. By this stage, I had 19 Nikon images and 15 Lumix images to choose from.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was experimenting with various different camera settings, so I kept several of the images just so that I could study the effects of choosing different apertures and shutter speeds, as well as the effects of using flash. Although I have a pretty good idea of what to expect, when using the Nikon, I am still 'feeling my way' with the Lumix.
I felt that I had achieved the best results when using a little fill-in' flash with the Nikon. I was particularly pleased to find that, although I was travelling light and had not brought my separate SB 600 flashgun, the on-camera flash of the Nikon did a good job in bringing out the 'sparkle' in the dusting of coloured scales on the undersides of the wings. The difference in colour between the male (bluer) and the female (greener) is very clear in the following photo (
click on the image to enlarge, to see scale detail).
![LgBlue-flash.jpg (148.68 KiB) Viewed 1048 times Daneway Banks - 26th June 2014 (5:15pm, dull cloudy conditions)<br />Nikon D300s with 90mm Tamron macro lens + 1.4X converter - 1/180s@f/9.5 (manual setting) ISO400, with flash](./files/thumb_11310_212c34e3b09c974e2c67814b68a31dec)
- Daneway Banks - 26th June 2014 (5:15pm, dull cloudy conditions)
Nikon D300s with 90mm Tamron macro lens + 1.4X converter - 1/180s@f/9.5 (manual setting) ISO400, with flash
The above photo also shows that the entrance to the '
corpus bursae', where the sperm packet is stored inside the female, is some distance from the tip of her abdomen.
My attempts to use flash on the Lumix were far less successful, resulting in very 'artificial' jet black backgrounds. I attribute the lack of success to my being much less familiar with the camera, the low power of the built-in flash, and the limited dynamic range of the Lumix sensor. Only time will tell how well I can overcome these limitations.
Over the time period that I was observing these butterflies, they were far from static, constantly rotating around one another on the flower head. It was only on examining all my photos that I realised that, in the initial photos, the male was in the upper position, whereas they had reversed in the later shots. It's all too easy to miss such observations when they eye is 'glued' to a viewfinder, concentrating on holding composition and focus!
![LB-rotation.jpg (124.23 KiB) Viewed 1048 times Daneway Banks - 26th June 2014](./files/thumb_11310_5458cb4744038def8489262f833c403a)
- Daneway Banks - 26th June 2014
In the above sequence, the first three images (L-R) are from the Nikon, with the last from the Lumix. The Lumix tends to over-emphasise blue colours, especially in shadow areas, so I have attempted to match the colour balance in Photoshop.
My apologies to those who are not interested in all this 'techie' photographic detail but I find it useful to document my experiences, especially when working with a new and unfamiliar camera.
Mike