Common blue with double spots?

[GOLDENORFE]

shot at grafton wood, presumed a brown argus when shot, quite small in size , but does appear to be a common blue but with doubled spots ?
colour appears wrong also , thought might be old but wings in excelent condition!
any thoughts?

phil

[Padfield]

I agree - that's a common blue. But it's been printed all wrong. I've never seen anything like it. It could be some extraordinary form of homeosis, where the pattern appropriate to one wing or part of wing is found on a different wing or part of wing - in this case, the pattern appropriate to one wing space being repeated in another.

Very strange indeed!

Guy

[Lee Hurrell]

That's bizarre - not only are some of the hindwing spots double printed but the orange lunule from the hind wing costa also appears to be on the forewing!

Strange!

Lee

[Piers]

I agree with Padfield. It's a very unusual case of homeosis. Probably quite unique.

[Padfield]

OK - don't take offence, Phil - I've got to ask this for my own peace of mind...

Are you playing games with us??

I downloaded the picture to examine it carefully and see if I could work out how it could happen and the most obvious way was ... digitally!

Hear me out.



The spots I've ringed give every appearance of intruding without distortion beyond the costa of the hindwing onto the forewing. The other doubled spots look like digital artefacts, being quite literally doubles - in fact translations - of existing spots. The hindwing orange spot translated onto the forewing is particularly weird.

So, as the Mentalist usually says to his suspects, 'Did you do it?'

Guy

[Piers]

Giving Phil the benefit of the doubt, is this something that could have occurred without Phil's knowledge during processing, or some sort of double exposure? (forgive my ignorance of digital photography).

Looking at Guy's blown-up image, I can not possibly imagine that the image represents what the insect actually looked like in nature..!

[Gruditch]

Yes it looks like upper spot of the two you ringed Guy, does overlaps onto the forewing, Phil.

Regards Gruditch

[Pete Eeles]

We all wait in suspense Phil - what say you?

Since you won last year's annual photo comp, I hope you didn't graft the ants onto the Silver-studded Blue that was emerging

Cheers,

- Pete

[GOLDENORFE]

NO manipulation, a single frame as shot, have just looked and unfortunatley i have already delited raw file,this is the only version i have!
i have no idea !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

why would any one think i would digitally manipulate an image is beyond me i dont need to cheat to get a good image


phil

[Padfield]

I'm saddened by your response, Phil, as I do try to avoid conflict on these forums. I hoped you would say it was a joke.

I was being polite in my post above. In fact, I performed several tests and satisfied myself beyond doubt that this was a digitally altered image. The hindwing venation is incorrect as posted but is corrected by returning the central spot to its original location (where it matches exactly, in dimensions and orientation, the original central spot). Other 'collateral damage', like spurious white marks, correlate precisely to cut and paste operations, which I duplicated on my own computer with considerable precision. There are numerous other detailed points that convinced me - I am quite happy to expand on these if pressed.

I admit I am often wrong, so the strongest I can claim is that I am satisfied this is an altered image. Obviously I can't claim that you altered it deliberately. It had occurred to me that stacking software, which I believe you use, had malfunctioned.

It may seem childish to insist on this, rather than just let it drop, but the value of photographs of aberrations - and many people do post such photographs - is greatly compromised if fake aberrations are not identified as such. I do not believe nature can produce this aberration. If she can, I am fascinated to know how, as normal intersegmental homeosis is not a very convincing explanation.

Guy

[Michaeljf]

The funny thing is - I rarely delete RAW files, I just convert the good ones to JPGs and keep the original RAW file as it was (you never know if in future your tastes will change!). RAW files are negatives: you can never get those back once deleted. Admittedly, this probably is also the reason I have quite a few 'portable' hard drives.

Michael

[David M]

At times like this I'm glad I'm not a keen photographer.

This is all getting reminiscent of an episode of Midsomer Murders

[millerd]

I too feel sad about this, as a degree of semi-related professional expertise led me the same conclusion as Guy. (I had wondered initially whether the effect was some artifact created internally by the camera system.) Paticularly sad as Phil has posted some of the most striking photos of butterflies I have seen, and they are now devalued - for me at any rate. I note that the image has also been challenged on Flickr for the same reasons.

Dave

[Trev Sawyer]

I think Guy may have hit the nail on the head.... I was (and continue to be) very impressed with Phil's photo-stacking methods and I also wondered if the photo is an example of that. The flower is pretty much in focus from front to back, whilst the background is beautifully blurred, so there does seem to be a possibility that photo-stacking was used. I'm sure Phil would have done this to create a cracking photograph and not to change the actual pattern on an insects wing. Phil's first post about the butterfly says to me that he was genuinely surprised by the doubled pattern he noticed in the image, so I don't for one minute believe he produced that effect deliberately. However, as there appear to be two angled lines which run across parts of the veined hind wing area and the fact that the front leg seems to have become duplicated somehow, one of them disappearing off into thin air under the butterfly's head, I was hoping Phil would say that it was a stacked image and then we could maybe conclude that the wind had moved the insect slightly further forward in two successively-taken shots and that the stacking software had interpreted this incorrectly to produce the doubled spots. Is that still a possibility? I find it very hard to believe that someone with such great shots as Phil has on his flickr site would waste any time on making an artificial insect, so my guess is still that it has somehow been produced unknowingly.

Trev (the peacemaker)

[GOLDENORFE]

Firstly let me say i am supprised so many people would think i would actually try to fake a photograph intentially!!!!!!!!!

i did NOT notice the double spots untill someone mentioned it after posting on flickr. so was not intentially done !

i very rarely use software to focus stack butterflys, but ocasionally add a better focused wing on a layer mask. i also never alter a background by focus stacking as it just doesnt work. backgrounds are all as shot .

the ONLY possible explanation is that at the time [ over 4 weeks ago so i cant actually remember ! ] i did use a layer mask with a sharper rear wing , may be with looking at all the brown argus i was doing at the time i just did not notice any thing wrong with the positioning of the spots in this image . they all begin to look similar after a while! i must say i am usually very good at aligning so i just cant remember or work out how this might have happened. maybe i just didnt finish it on the day i started and just did not notice anything wrong when finishing of next day.

here is another shot done same time , this was 2 frames merged properly



and a tree bumble bee shot on same flower , anyone ever seen one of these?




so thanks to everyone for the character assassination, it felt really great !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


phil .

[Rogerdodge]

Phil
I don't think there was any character assassination intended.
You posted a photograph that had been fairly clearly digitally altered.
The alteration was pointed out, with many suggesting that it was probably inadvertent.
You then denied any manipulation.
Then you came back to say that it was probably a manipulation error.
That's fine.
I don't think anyone suggested that you intended to deceive, and the general consensus is you made a genuine mistake.
Your photos are generally superb, and I hope you don't "throw your toys out of the pram" like some have done in the past.
Keep posting – I for one would miss your contributions.
Oh - and that tree bee is fabulous.

[_astralis]

Hi all,

Having read all of the above replies, i thought id add in my own 2 cents. Phil showed me this image before he even uploaded it to Flickr and i didnt notice the double spots either (im clearly not very observant!). Although i agree with the consensus that the double spots are actually duplicates of the originals, i think this was completely unintentional. How the double spots got there in the first place, i have no idea. Most of the image is in focus front to back but its definitely softer at the centre of the flower and it has been shot at a wider angle. For me, this confirms that this image wasn't focus stacked. Phil is very thorough when it comes to making sure he has every part of the subject photographed in focus for stacking later. Ive seen him in action! Sometimes when you're post-processing an image and using layers, the layer can move a little without you realising if you're working quickly. Perhaps this is what happened? Regardless, the point is this wasn't done deliberately. We all know that the discovery of a new aberration is a big deal. I know Phil and he would never consider doing something like this on purpose.

I think some of the replies on here have been quite disappointing. Reading between the lines, there are some definite accusations flying around that aren't fair at all. Id thought about starting to post on this forum again myself but having read this thread, i think ill remain a "lurker", LOL! Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but i dont feel there is any need to discredit Phil's work as a whole. He is a fantastic photographer who perhaps made an error unknowingly. Give him the benefit of the doubt!

Gill

[millerd]

Phil
I don't think there was any character assassination intended.
You posted a photograph that had been fairly clearly digitally altered.
The alteration was pointed out, with many suggesting that it was probably inadvertent.
You then denied any manipulation.
Then you came back to say that it was probably a manipulation error.
That's fine.
I don't think anyone suggested that you intended to deceive, and the general consensus is you made a genuine mistake.
Your photos are generally superb, and I hope you don't "throw your toys out of the pram" like some have done in the past.
Keep posting – I for one would miss your contributions.
Oh - and that tree bee is fabulous.

Hear hear to every word of that, Roger.

Dave

[David M]

He is a fantastic photographer...

He is.

...who perhaps made an error unknowingly...

He probably did.

..Give him the benefit of the doubt!

We will.

Can we now move on?

[Michaeljf]

I have no problem with images being manipulated - but the photographer should know (and be able to state) what they have done. The work on the pictures above was not accidental, though I'm pretty sure the outcome was and that the initial question was an 'innocent' one.

Photographers here must be honest about what they have done with their images. Otherwise suddenly you have the Loch Ness Monster appearing whereas previously you had a swimming elephant in a loch .

Folks should be careful regarding post-processing of images. Unless you are doing a simple crop or re-size then you have manipulated the image: tone, sharpening and value changes are all slight changes, though they are more 'visual preferences' than big manipulations. But those who have not worked on their images and are just loading up 'jpgs' shot on site are probably in the minority here (sorry David!)

Sorry to drag this out, but I feel there are still a few 'worthy' points to this discussion.

Michael

Sometimes when you're post-processing an image and using layers, the layer can move a little without you realising if you're working quickly.

why would any one think i would digitally manipulate an image is beyond me i dont need to cheat to get a good image, phil