www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I am very impressed by the photos of John Bogle (Fishiee) and Nigel Kiteley amongst others, particularly as they manage to get such clear backgrounds to their photos. Is there a secret to this or are the backgrounds added later?
Ian

Hi Ian, I'm sure John / Nigel et al can give you more info but the trick is to make sure that the distance behind the butterfly to the nearest object (bush, grass stem, ground etc) is at least twice the distance from your camera to the butterfly. This will ensure a shallow depth of field and clean backgound. Try to isolate the subject if you can, not always possible. Alternatively you could increase the aperture if you have that option, though the problem with this method, is that some of the butterfly may be out of focus. Hope that helps. Regards, Leigh

Ian Pratt wrote: Is there a secret to this or are the backgrounds added later?
Ian

No all done in the field. When you know how to get such shots it's actually quite easy.

Regards Gruditch

The only real trick is to just find the butterflies with the clean backgrounds. If the background is a mess I just don't take the photo, or if I do it's usually deleted afterwards. When butterflies are roosting, just settling down for the night or warming up in the morning it's pretty easy really, just spend time looking and you will find the 'sitters' If the buterflies are active then it's just luck where they land and you just have to be patient.

But at the same time, the closer you can get, and the longer the lens, the more diffused and out of focus the background will be. I'll generally be getting as close as is physically possible (ie I fill the frame rather than crop the image) as this will assist in getting the clean background. I'll mainly take shots in the range F7-F12, but sometimes up to F18 or higher if I'm trying freaky angles, but then the background has to be pretty empty!

The smaller butterflies like Blue's I'll be pretty close to, so need F10 or so to get everything sharp as the closer I get the less depth of field I get (the eternal battle!) but for larger buterflies I can get away with F7, sometimes less as I'm further away so get more dof, but also more background detail comes in. But then if I'm trying to be arty with an attractive flower head, sexy looking piece of grass etc. then it's all about getting that structure in focus too (but still watching out for the backgrounds).

Also, the bigger the camera sensor is the more diffused the background (and less depth of field) there will be, so for full frame cameras say you get a cleaner background but your depth of field is not so good . For a tiny sensor compact you get more depth of field than you know what to do with and (stupidly high shuter speeds thrown in too when you can get away with F2.7, 3.5 or something crazy) but the backgrounds are more of a challenge as they are going to show up more detail also. I use a 1.6x crop camera (50D - still waiting for 7DII canon!) which is a nice balance. I'd like to try the canon 1.3x crops but they phased those out the buggers!