Macro Skipper
A couple of days ago I found six or seven skippers on this small patch of flowers in the upper intertidal zone on the pebble beach in Trafalgar Park. These butterflies really get around, and quickly so they are not all that easy to photograph. But, with patience, they came within range of my macro lens, though never as close I wanted. Cropping solved that problem. I was draped over a comfortable boulder that gave very good support to my one arm so hand-holding was not an issue.
I don’t know which skipper it is (I am guessing it is the Woodland Skipper), nor do I know what the flowers are (not even guessing on that one). Thank goodness I don’t claim to be a naturalist!
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Canon 5Dii, Canon 100mm/f2.8 macro lens, ISO100, f2.8 and f4, 1/500th and 1/650th, hand-held.
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Sweet series, I really like the second to the last!
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Thanks David. That is the only one that I got from that angle which worked. More often they sit with their wings partly open.
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This isway better than I’ve done in the past on this type of subject. I can’t get them to sit still for 1/125th of a second. Are you offering treats like I do with my car?
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Hi Ken – they would not sit still, so instead I did. It was a beautiful day to sit around on a beach, so that was no hardship. Eventually they would fly into my range of view. If I already had the camera positioned with only minor adjustments needed for framing and focus, then they did not get alarmed and fly away before sipping from the flowers and thus I probably had 2 or 3 seconds to get these shots. I got quite a few useable shots. The same for bees and flies, which I will show sometime as well.
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Beautiful! And I’m impressed by your steady hand.
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Hi Laurie. The steady hand was really a steady body. I had a boulder in my armpit and the elbow on the beach with that had on the lens and my other arm tight against my body and head – making a bit of a tripod out of my self. Still, I really wish I had some image stabilisation lenses, especially the newer version of this lens that has IS.
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