Butterflies with my 100-400L

[dpSparhawk]

A trip to the local zoo today and I was debating with myself whether to take my 100L macro lens for the Butterfly house as well as my long lens. I decided not to take the Macro lens and I'm rather pleased I didn't.

First time shooting butterflies with a long lens and I think they came out rather nicely.

All natural light, 1/50th - 1/320th at f/5.6 at 350 - 400mm. I think next time, a smaller aperture would still yield nice bokeh and give me greater DoF on the subject. All depends on how far I have to push the ISO. These were at 100 and 200. I think I'd probably go up to 320 maximum perhaps.






Composition isn't great on this one but I still like it

[Bilbo_baggin]

They are very nicely done Ian - and assuming there is not much cropping going on, some great detail from a lens not intended for this kind of work.

Paul.

[dpSparhawk]

Cheers Paul.

All four of them are Zero crop. I was shooting at varying distances. I think for the first two, probably 7 or 8ft away? Maybe a touch closer. The last two I was as close as the lens would allow.

I have to admit, I'm certainly surprised at how well the long lens would work. I'd rather look forward to seeing what your 500 could do.

[peterc4]

like a bit of butterfly action no 2 for me, I reckon you could go up to 500 easily with 7d

[dpSparhawk]

Cheers Peter.

To be honest, the 7D does higher ISO very well however at higher focal lengths, noise does seem to be more apparent and it can affect sharpening of RAW files (Every SLR needs images sharpening no matter what the body or lens due to the filters on the sensor)

[peterc4]

To be honest, the 7D does higher ISO very well however at higher focal lengths, noise does seem to be more apparent and it can affect sharpening of RAW files (Every SLR needs images sharpening no matter what the body or lens due to the filters on the sensor)

can you not remove any noise in raw and sharpen in cs6

[dpSparhawk]

can you not remove any noise in raw and sharpen in cs6

Of course, however as you remove noise you remove or soften detail and quite often noise reduces detail anyway. I prefer to see high ISO as "the last option" just to get the shot. If I can avoid it I will .

I tend to export RAW to 16bit TIFF (lossless) and reduce noise / sharpen in CS6 as there's far more control (for me at least).

As we've discussed, ISO 500 is certainly workable on the 7D but you have to have a very sharp well lit image to start with.

[roofio]

Yeah very nicely done man! Number 3 for me as the background is nice and blured with minimal distraction. The DOF is just about right too!

[dpSparhawk]

Thank you Roofio and welcome to DF