Butterfly and Bluebells


Posted by steve mackay on Sun Apr 20, 2014 11:13 am

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A shot from yesterday, the Bluebells are a bit early this year (due to the UK's 'warm' winter and Spring).
After taking lots of shots I found a sunbathing Comma Butterfly (which absolutely made my day!).
I used a 18mm macro lens and focus stacking to get the Bluebells looking dense, I wanted to get closer but I didn't have my 500mm and the path I was on was as near as I could get.........so it's a bit of a where's Wally the Comma composition ..........it looks a lot better viewed larger and it's saved at nearly 50% JPEG to get it under 250kb.

5DII, 180mm, 10 shots, F11, tripod, cable release, live view, Helicon Focus 6

Thanks for looking, cheers
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by Mark Picard on Sun Apr 20, 2014 2:21 pm
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Great comp. and I really like the butterfly treatment here Steve. Overall it does appear to be a bit "crunchy" though.
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by Carol Clarke on Sun Apr 20, 2014 4:47 pm
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You have to click on this to see it at its best.  Good find with the butterfly Steve!  and what is more classic English Spring image than a Bluebell wood.  Nicely done!  8)
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by John Labrenz on Sun Apr 20, 2014 11:23 pm
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Absolutely love it!
The butty is the icing on the cake.
 

by Eia on Mon Apr 21, 2014 5:59 pm
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by Keith Bozeman on Mon Apr 21, 2014 6:52 pm
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Great stacking. Amazing the butterfly stayed there for that long.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Apr 22, 2014 7:19 am
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Very pretty. JPEG compression is really getting the best of this but I can imagine what an uncompressed version would look like.
 

by Andy Bell on Tue Apr 22, 2014 7:44 am
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Would love to see this 1) at a much bigger size and 2) without the jpeg compression.

Lovely composition * lighting.
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by steve mackay on Tue Apr 22, 2014 7:06 pm
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Thanks for comments all, cheers

@Keith, hi, the Butterfly isn't in all the shots (it's only in three), but any focus stacking software will add elements that aren't in all shots, as long as they are sharp, if they aren't they will be seen as a blurry mess.....so I did some touching up for the two frames where the BF wasn't in focus.......Helicon Focus 6 is the most impressive stacking software I've used yet, much less halos and better alignment.....but still not perfect......the sequence of 10 shots is (at a guess, i'll check to make sure) taken over approx 1 minute?......so the result is probably seen as a bit of a cheat to some?........the only reason for using my 180mm for the Bluebells is because they look so hopelessly sparse with anything much less than 50mm (50mm is cool though, 14mm forget it! :) ).......but obviously the 180mm lens can't get everything in focus for a single shot like this, hence the stacking, which isn't ideal at 100%, detail wise (due to Bluebells moving in the wind and changing light, which looked better on the lit VS unlit Bluebells in some of the single frames), so it's a compromise between the scene, lens and method......but I still prefer it to a wide-angle version.
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Last edited by steve mackay on Mon Apr 28, 2014 4:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
 

by pleverington on Fri Apr 25, 2014 4:57 pm
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Hi Steve--salutations my friend... Listen your image depicts what the eye would see. Screw the limitations of lenses! If you have been true to the eye then your image is clearly in the service of nature's causes. That's my thoughts about stacking and stitching. They are not a cheat. They in fact endeavor to portray the reality of what the human eye would see and the human eye is remarkable when it comes to depth of field.

I love the shot. As is i have nothing to say other than beautiful. You must have been shaking when you had the butterfly in the viewfinder too! Compositionally wise, there's choices to my mind on this one. As is is fine, let's get that out of the way. However, that being said, the butterfly gets lost a bit with  competition of the flowers. There is a struggle. Granted i love the feel of something I have to look for in a comp because it is some what hidden or camouflaged let's say, but here, a possible comp might be to back off the flower saturation and/or increase the butterfly's saturation. Or a crop off the right side placing the butterfly at the upper right thirds sweet spot would look nice too. Maybe combine both. Either case a definite subject is probably best. Which here is unclear....

This is definitely an image for learning for all of us IMO. It's one of those rare ones that are great regardless, so fine tweaking is all that is possible. But those fine tweaks can be so powerful sometimes. Not saying this is necessarily so here as my opinion is only that...


Awesome one of a kind shot.

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by Wade Thorson on Sat Apr 26, 2014 9:07 am
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Man this is great. I love the bluebell season. They make for some terrific images. Great job with focus stacking. Now if I were to nit... I might prefer a more off center position of the butterfly to create a bit more tension. Plus a bit of dodging to highlight and separate the butterfly from the tree trunk a bit more (or some burning of the tree). Wonderful image well done!
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by steve mackay on Sat Apr 26, 2014 10:06 pm
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WOW!, thanks for EP, i'm very happy! :)

Hi Paul.........now that's what I call a very cool and in depth comment, it really made my day!, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, definitely lots of things to look at and improve........you wrote "as my opinion is only that"......well, your "opinion" is very highly regarded!, so many thanks again, seriously I really appreciated the time you took to write your thoughts and great advice, cheers. :)

Hi Wade, many thanks for your comment, some great advice from you too, it's really appreciated!. :)
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by Jackie Schuknecht on Tue May 06, 2014 9:53 am
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Congrats Steve, lovely image, and great work putting it together!
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by steve mackay on Thu May 08, 2014 5:29 pm
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Many thanks, Jackie! :)
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