www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I have been experimenting with exposure times, especially in poor light, and have got down to 1/25 sec with a still subject on a few occasions. This beautifully-fresh Map Butterfly was considerate enough to stay still for a few moments and with rare conditions of absolutely no wind, I got the exposure down (or, more accurately, up) to 1/6 sec, which gave me a decent depth of field.

I just wondered if other UKB photographers do this as matter of course and whether the increase in the depth of field is noticeable. These reduced-size attachments need to be clicked to view the photo normal sized.

Hi Roger,

I always shoot aperture priority anyway and change ISO accordingly for the light to try and keep shutter speed around 1/200s. I usually walk around with the camera set to F8 or F10 and ISO at 200/250. If the light is low I'll go up to ISO400 (maybe at a push 500) before I then increasing the aperture as far as about F5.6 for larger butterflies. I have to be sure I'm dead parallel to get enough DOF at 5.6 or I can step back a little to gove more DOF and be prepared to crop the image.

If the light is worse I'll then stick the camera on a tripod rather than a monopod as if the light is that low the butterflies won't be moving much anyway!

If I am in a stable enough position I can sometimes get away with as low as 1/50s on the monopod if there is no wind but try to stick to 1/100 or above.

On the tripod if there is zero wind I can get away with 1-2s

I always try for the required depth of field rather than go for shutter speed then if I do flook one that's sharp in low light I have it all in focus. I'd rather do that than have lots of sharp but not fully in focus shots.