www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

While I was in Scotland last month I took a photo of an Orange Tip nectaring on dandelion and to my surprise the tips appear more yellow than orange. Was it the way the camera captured the image or is the yellowness due to some natural variation/age or specific to the location? See photo (not the best quality I must admit )
Peter

I would blame the camera! I have loads of over-exposed shots that look like this. Whites and orange-tips are always difficult to photograph well in sunshine, as the wings reflect very strongly. If your camera has adjustments then it's best to under-expose by about 1 stop for these subjects.

Thank you Mike. I possess a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G10 camera and always use the IA (Intelligent Auto mode) to save me messing about setting focus, shutter speed, etc. I understand your point about over-exposure so something to bear in mind in certain conditions.

Peter

I used to do precisely the same with my Panasonic FZ45 but Neil (nfreem) gave me a useful tip - change the exposure setting to -2/3, which is what I use as default these days, unless it's particularly overcast.

Peter uses:

Lumix DMC-G10

I am not familiar with that particular Panasonic but it is bound to have an exposure bracketing function as do most Lumix cameras.

As others have said, for a white butterfly, as a starting point adjust the basic exposure by -1 stop and additionally, set it to exposure bracket around that - 1 by say 2/3 stop. Thus you will have three exposures set at -1/3, -1.0 and -5/3. One of these is bound to be satisfactory.

Other Panasonic Lumix models I have owned are capable of (not always achieved of course!) excellent results. The reviews of G10 suggest it is an very good camera (with a large sensor) but I would expect that it takes a lot of trial and error to get the best out of it.

Jack

Thank you David and Jack. I've just had a look to see what I can do with my camera to improve my butterfly photos. It sounds easy enough so I will experiment a bit. The other thing is that I always attach the lens hood so I imagine this would effect exposure.

Hopefully I will be off later in the week to search for Adonis Blues on the Chilterns.

Peter

peterc wrote:The other thing is that I always attach the lens hood so I imagine this would effect exposure.

Hi Peter,
The lens hood should only have an effect when the sun or other bright light might otherwise shine directly on the front of the camera lens and cause lens flare. For that reason it's good practice to use it, but It shouldn't affect exposure under normal circumstances.