www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I've been a 35mm slide film user for decades, and I really love the results - there is nothing in my experience to beat a projected slide in terms of colour rendition, tonal quality, sharpness, and that difficult to define quality that brings the subject to life on the screen. I also love using my Minolta SLRs because it's so easy to compose through the very clear optical TTL viewfinder.

Sadly it looks as though my chosen medium is coming to the end of it's life due to lack of demand - everyone is going digital, and I'm the first to acknowledge that digital has many advantages - the metering and focussing systems are more advanced, the cameras are lighter and more compact, you can shoot dozens of shots of the same subject to make sure you get everything right, and it's very quick and easy to download, edit, and put the shots in a presentation, send them in e-mails, or use them on websites.

I am getting into digital gradually, having bought a Nikon 5600 compact, which produces accurately exposed macro shots by daylight or flash, but sometimes focusses on the wrong thing, and has a tiny 1.8" LCD which is almost impossible to use in sunshine. Sometime this year I will probably make the next step - to upgrade to a digital SLR or a digital "bridge" camera, i.e. one with a fixed macro-zoom, and an electronic viewfinder.

I'd be extremely interested to hear the views of other butterfly photographers about the relative merits of "bridge" cameras such as the Panasonic FZ5, Olympus SP500, Sony DSC-R1, Minolta A200 and Fuji S9500 - and how they compare in use with DSLRs such as the Minolta Dynax 5D, Canon 350D, Nikon D50, Olympus E500 etc. Is it really worth the considerable extra expense of getting a digital SLR and lens system, or are bridge cameras good enough for serious butterfly photography ?

What I'd really like to know about the bridge cameras is :

Are the electronic viewfinders good enough for composition and focussing on butterflies ?

Are the fixed zoom lenses adequate ? Will they enable me to frame a butterfly from a few feet away, and gradually move closer, without fiddling about with buttons and menus, so that I can fill the frame with e.g. a Small Copper at a ( 35mm equivalent ) focal length of about 100mm ?

I'd also like to know how people view their digital images. I have no desire whatsoever to view prints, and digital projectors all seem limited to a hopeless 1024x768 pixels, which hardly does justice to a 8 megapixel camera ! I'm quite happy to view the shots on a monitor, but my existing Sony 17" flat screen CRT will only cope with 1152x864 pixels, which is not much better than a digital projector. Some 19" CRT monitors will cope with up to 1600x1200 at 75Mhz, which gives finer detail, with the pixels almost invisible to the eye, but CRT monitors have aperture-grille wires that show up on the screen as a pair of irritating thin horizontal lines, and spoil my enjoyment of the images. The answer is presumably to get a decent 19" TFT monitor, but these all seem to be limited to a native resolution of 1280x1024 pixels.

Any comments or recommendations regarding digital cameras and monitors would be extremely well received !

Adrian Hoskins

Hi,

Well I can recommend what I use for butterfly photography, and that is a Fuji s7000. I have no knowledge of the s9500 but I have found the 7000 far more than adequate and it can easily hold its own against far more expensive and complicated set ups.

Take a look at my images on this site if you want to get an idea of what it can do. I have no problem composing images with the viewfinder and its an easy camera to use without struggling with controls and buttons.

I can only give you my experience but I have been very happy with the fuji and its nice not to have tons of heavy expensive equipment to lug around.

I must agree withMatt, the Fuji s7000 is a good quality low end priced SLR type camera capable of taking quality photographs such as those shown by myself on this website.

If there is a disadvantage relative to SLR’s with a seperate lens then it must be that the subject needs to be closer to achieve the desired end result.
The s9550 focal lengths have changed which somewhat redresses this problem although personally I have yet to try out this camera.
In the meantime I will just enjoy the challenge that getting closer to the butterfly gives me personally.

At the end of most seasons I make Cd,s of the pictures taken and view them through my DVD recorder onto a 30 inch LCD television. Seeing butterflies in focus nearly 30inches across is something to behold.

Cheers


Colin

I have been a user of Fuji S5000, S7000, Canon 300D and now 20D. The DSLR's have their advantages and disadvantages. Price is the first consideration, a dslr body alone probably costs more than the S9500 and then you have to buy a macro lens or extension tubes. A dedicated macro lens of 105mm can cost around £250-£300. One other thing to think about is that the S9500, S7000 etc. will have a better depth of field than the dslr. The benefit of the dslr is that it will show better detail and probably have less noise.

If you use a Fuji S7000 I know that the Raynox DCR-150 macro lens is a great add on.

Many thanks for the information regarding the use of the Raynox DCR-150 macro lens with the Fuji s7000.
I have ordered mine and look forward to the advantages that the lens will provide in the field this year.

Cheers

Colin

You have made a good move by buying the DCR-150, when I used my one I never put the camera into macro mode and just clipped the DCR onto the front. I think you will be impressed with these lenses. There is also the DCR-250 but many people find this far too powerful for butterflies. I am not sure if linking is allowed but there is a forum at s5000.net that has loads of information on this subject.

Along with his wonderful specimen desciptions of the past few weeks it has not gone unmissed that Adrian has exhibited his first butterfy photos on this website, and looking at the fine quality of the shots it wont be his last.

Having had the the discussion previously on this forum as to which digital camera was considered to have the finest qualities I hope Adrian doesn't find me pertinent in asking him which camera he finally decided upon and why.


Regards

Colin

Returning to a point that Adrian made about digital projectors in his original posting....

Against my better judgement - I can see his point about the low resolution - I tried using one for a presentation recently and I was surprisingly impressed. It looked very good, and sharpness was not an issue. It may be that we are fooled by the brain into thinking that such an image is sharper than it really is, in the same way that small files look sharper on a vdu than they do printed out to the same size. Another possibility of course might be that slides are not as sharp as they look - after all, the projector lenses are usually very wide aperture and pretty basic optically. Thoughts?

Chris

May I suggest you look at the Panasonic FZ20, if you can find one, or the newer Panasonic FZ30. I've been using my FZ20 for a couple of years and have had some excellent results, both from colour prints and from digital projectors, gets very good write-ups on most digital camera sites and has won a couple of awards. 12x opitical zoom and macro, the lens is made by leica.

I am pretty impressed with the Canon S3 which I bought recently as an upgrade to my Fuji S602Z. The basic macro mode is a waste of time, and the super macro mode, although excellent, requires you to get so close to an insect that it will often be spooked before you can snap it. But the addon Canon 500D close-up lens makes all the difference. I can get 1:1 macro at the telephoto end of the zoom from about 12" away and the results are very good. It attaches via a bayonet fit adapter that can be whipped off in a second for normal shots. The clincher for me is the nifty flip out viewscreen which you can angle to take overhead or ground level shots using the viewscreen to frame the image.
The real advantages with prosumer cameras over DSLRs are weight - there's no way I'd want to go back to the SLR days of carrying loads of lenses around, and dust - DSLRs are prone to dust on the sensors, something that a fixed lens camera should never have a problem with.