www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Hi,

Having re-discovered my interest in butterflies this year and getting out and about a bit I have been using my old Canon Powershot A470 compact camera to take pictures.
The Brown Argus below is one of my favourites so far taken with this camera.
For next year however, I would like to upgrade to something a little better. There is no way that I will have the budget for a DSLR and will be limited to something in the region of £150.
Looking around the web, I have spotted cameras such as the Canon Powershot SX130IS and Fujifilm S1600 and S1800. I would be interested in peoples opinions of these cameras or indeed of any other that may fall into my limited budget.

Many thanks.

Neil.

Hi Neil,

I'll leave the camera critique to others but I do like your Brown Argus shot

Cheers

Lee

I agree - a really lovely shot for sure. The only negative comment I have is with regard to the composition - with the butterfly slap bang in the middle of the shot. Some post-processing could sort that out. A couple of ideas below. The "rule of thirds" is a good measure Some sharpening, fill light and saturation added too!

Cheers,

- Pete

Thanks for the comments guys and especially for the advice on composition Pete, I especially like your first example.
What was the software that you used for the post processing?
I am still very new at this and the original is just as the camera took it.

With regards to my comments in the OP about possible camera upgrades with my limited budget of around £150, do you have any suggestions?

Neil.

nfreem wrote:What was the software that you used for the post processing?

Adobe Lightroom, but you can get the same effect in most decent apps these days - Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, etc. etc. including some that are free!

Cheers,

- Pete

nfreem wrote:With regards to my comments in the OP about possible camera upgrades with my limited budget of around £150, do you have any suggestions?

So why do you think you need to upgrade?

Cheers,

- Pete

The compact that I have is a fairly old Canon Powershot A470 with a 3.4x optical zoom. Whilst I have managed to get a few reasonable shots with it, I am thinking that a zoom in the region of 10x to 15x with decent image stabilisation will allow me more options with my shots. One example of this being this year when I had loads of Holly Blues in my Garden that insisted on staying up in the shrubs tantalysingly just out of reach of me getting the shots. With my current camera the best shots I have managed were within inches of the Butterfly.

Neil,
I am certainly no expert, but I use a Canon Ixus 970, which produces reasonable results. It is better than the Canon PowerShot A1000S that I use at work. Both of these are probably no longer available and they were about £250 when they were new. However, I am sure that for £150 you should be able to pick up a compact Canon that is as good now.
Having said that, I am always disappointed with the depth of field that I get with the compact. It is often not enough to get the whole of the butterfly in focus, unless it is perfectly flat. Strangely, the backgrounds remains in reasonable focus, and not completely blurred as with decent SLRs. The picture that you have taken of the Brown Argus looks to be as good as you could expect from the cameras above.
A lot of people on here swear by the Panasonic Lumix FZ38. I don't have any experience of it, but I think you should be able to pick one up for a shade under £250 if you can stretch to that. It isn't a compact, but there are some great pictures on here taken with it.

The Panasonic Lumix FZ38 is currently at £216 on Dixons interweb site. Has been as low as £212 on Amazon but much higher at the moment. I know it's not yet £150 but it's a little bit nearer...

Hmmm, been looking into the Panasonic FZ38, might be worth looking at e-bay to see what they go for on there.....