www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Thanks Chris, you have just saved me a couple of hundred pound!!

Robin

First image outing with the new macro lens. Long way to go before I catch up with Oy and co but not a bad hand held shot.

Interesting how the Brimstone has its front legs tucked up under its chin or whatever the space where the proboscis goes is called.

Robin

Nice shot Robin!

Told you it was a good lens

On the subject of macro lenses, I have a Sigma 105mm which I consider to be excellent. My feeling is that Sigma macros are just as good as Canon macros but a lot cheaper, e.g. on a quick web search a new Sigma 105mm is around £264 and a Canon 100mm is £356 (may be cheaper elsewhere, but this show the relative cost).

Another consideration is weight: the Sigma 105mm lens cf the Sigma 150mm or even the 180mm – the 105mm is 457g and the 150mm is double this at 895mm and the 180mm slightly more. I haven’t tried the 150mm but the combination of my Canon 20D (685g) and the Sigma 105mm lens is quite heavy (1142g in total) for hand-held shots and I think the extra weight of the 150mm lens would make it quite difficult to handle. This is certainly true for me as I take most of my shots in the south of France where the 30-35+C temperatures make even 1142g feel heavy enough.

As the detail level of the 105mmm lens is in my opinion very good, I would find it hard to see what advantage a 150mm or greater lens would give. But then photography is very much matter of personal preferences.

This combination produces (on the largest file option) images of 3504x2336 pixels and reducing down to 800 pixels loses quite a lot of detail. I have some photos using the Canon20D/Sigma 105mm on the gallery page of UK butterflies. On my own site I have images at 1000 or 1280 pixels width.

Roger Gibbons wrote:
As the detail level of the 105mmm lens is in my opinion very good, I would find it hard to see what advantage a 150mm or greater lens would give. But then photography is very much matter of personal preferences.

I chose the Sigma 150mm over the 105mm for three reasons...

The HSM silent focusing

The 150mm does not extend whilst focusing - spooks the subject less

The added working distance

I chose the Sigma 150mm for one reason - Oy said it was the best and if I can produce pictures half as good as his with it I'll consider it money well spent. Not actually able to use it on Butterflies as yet, obviously, but as a general lens it's superb - tack sharp on my Canon 30D.

I hate to argue, but I have a Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens which is superb, but my favourite lens to use for butterflys is a zoom. I use the Canon 100-400L IS with 3 extention tubes on my EOS 1DmarkII N. It gives superb detail and a working distance of about 4 feet, not the "inches" of a zoom.

These are full frame...







Martin.

It’s interesting that the 150mm is silent and doesn’t extend - I wasn’t aware of this, being a newcomer to digital photography. I must admit though that I have only occasionally found the 105mm motor and/or extension to scare off the subject.

Does this also mean that the 150mm focuses faster than the 105mm? That would be a plus, as the bigger problem I have is the need to get a quick shot and sometimes having to wait just a second or two for the autofocus loses the optimum shot angle or the subject altogether. As I tend to work in high temperatures, the subjects are very active and often the time window might be very short.

I guess that the added working distance would allow the use of a tripod, which I have never really been able to use (I plan to start getting up earlier in 2007 before the butterflies warm up!) because trying to set it up close to an active subject would inevitably cause too much disturbance.

No doubt you get what you pay for in the camera world, but I wonder with the recent advances in imaging technology whether it is close to the limit of what can be achieved, and does the better lens really make that much difference, given that even the best computer screen are 1280x1024 and images have to be shrunk down to fit, losing a lot of resolution in the process? Publishing would be a different matter, of course.

Here’s a cropped section of a photo that wasn’t targeted for the close up:
http://www.butterfliesoffrance.com/html ... /1293a.htm

The common blue underside photo is superb, the best photo in the competition in my opinion on the basis of detail. Maybe I should start saving for the 150mm lens and get the tripod dusted off…

Incidentally, this is a great web site and an invaluable discussion forum - thanks, Pete.

Yes on both counts.

I use my tripod a lot more with the 150mm - much more useable!

The focusing is a lot faster!

A quick q please - this thread is most amazingly useful.

I reach the old crumbly age of 40 this year and I have sufficient wife points ( and permission ! ) to go and buy a camera of my choice which will be a canon d30.

My olympus C-500 takes wonderful super macro images but I am going up a step now and will purchase either a 100mm canon macro or the 150mm sigma macro with the d30.

My question is this - will these lenses focus automatically or manually and is there any advantage to either?
Apologies if it is a bit of a n00by question - I could talk astrophotography til the cows come home but DSLR kit is new territory to me.

Any comments would be gratefully received.

Many thanks
Martin
( http://www.mgnastro.org )

Hi Martin,

I think you mean Canon 30D (the D30 is a film camera, I believe!).

Both lenses will focus either automatically or manually - depending on the switch setting on the lens. As for advantage/disadvantages - this takes a lot of experimenting with. Some autofocus lenses take an age to focus, and you lose the shot in the process! However, they are pretty good. When using a tripod I always use manual focus.

Cheers,

- Pete

Hi, I use the 30D with Sigma 150mm macro for small wildlife (well I would but I haven't seen a butterfly yet since I bought it in November!!) Initial impressions are extremely positive, it's a mightily sharp lens and realatively fast to focus. Only one point I haven't used the Canon 100mm but I have noticed there is quite a difference between Canon "L" lenses and non "L". Wherever possible by a "L" The quality is infinitely better.

Pete Eeles wrote:Hi Martin,

I think you mean Canon 30D (the D30 is a film camera, I believe!).

Pete - you are correct - 30d of course.
Well - I've just mugged the bank account and bought the 30d and the 17-85mm lens bundle , so step 1 complete.
Step 2 for the sigma lens will be complete when my father next goes to the states in a few weeks - it is almost half the cost than in the UK and that will be the two painful steps over with.
Step 3 will involve finding something small to photograph , less painful but much harder work !

The set of images I took http://www.mgnastro.org/wildlife.html here were with my super cheapy olympus c-500 but I had to get within an inch of the subject ( lots of patience & I threw away a lot ! ) . The results for a sub £100 camera are pretty amazing if you ask me but I should get far better results with a 30d & a sigma.

I'll post my initial results as soon as I can

cheers
Martin
( http://www.mgnastro.org )

I have read this thread with much interest. I am purchasing on Monday a Cannon 400D and the Cannon macro lens named above.

I too was not sure which lens to get and what would be the best one. I have done a fair amount of research and looking at photos taken with each lens (other peoples pictures) to come to my conclusion. Also I am told that the cannon lens is much better quality than the sigma. If you do a search on the web for the lens using one of the price comparision sites, you can find it for £348. It will all depend on your budget at the end of the day. Canon are also offering a £20 cashback on this at the moment.

I hope to have my new kit within the week. You can do a search on the flickr website to find pictures taken with that lens to see what type of results it gives, but you'll need to take into acount that everyone has different cameras.

I have in the past been very close to the butterflies with my old kit, and have decided that this will give me a little more distance and still get all the detail that I want.

Good luck!

Hi all,
I use the Sigma 150mm 2.8 lens myself,I am extremely pleased with it with insect shots so far.apparently the best stop to have this lens set to is f16 ish and even so that depth of field is like the edge of a razor blade!..

This will be my first season for butterfly images so this for sure will be a trial for me!

Nearby to me there is Heath Fritillaries so they are my No1 target
When would these be in flight? May or June?
Some example wildlife shots of the Sigma 150 mm are on my site

http://www.pbase.com/wild_england

Kind regards
Steve

Hi Steve,

See

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species. ... Fritillary

for flight times. In particular, look at the information attached to each photo of the adult.

Cheers,

- Pete

Thanks Pete..much appreciated