Eastern Swallowtail

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:59 am

EOS 20D
Canon EF 28-135mm @ 135mm close focus
430EX Speedlite ETTL
South Mountain State Park, North Carolina

salden · Post by **salden** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 6:59 am

These are beautiful BF. I think you got a little off on the wings. The color seems to be a bit flat and maybe oversharpened or it could be a light reflection causing the "white sparkles"?

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:17 am

I probably over cropped and over sharpened the photo. How's this:

Canon EOS 20D
Canon EF 28-135mm IS Wide Angle Zoom @ 135mm close focus
430EX Canon Speedlite ETTL

Almost sharp, wing tip to wing tip, how unusual.

Thanks Sue

salden · Post by **salden** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:24 am

You have good DOF on this, but I think your flash was set too high. Might not have needed the flash at all actually.

rovebeetle · Post by **rovebeetle** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:59 am

I like the unusual crop of the 1st one very much.

Getting the exposure right is a bit difficult when yellow flowers are in the image. You have to decide - expose for the butterfly and blow the yellow petals or expose for the petals and have a slightly underexposed butterfly.

No idea how you process your images but if you use Photoshop, you might try to add a levels adjustment layer, do the correction for the butterfly and mask the flower - that would make the butterfly pop out a bit more.

Cheers

salden · Post by **salden** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:11 am

I like the first crop as well. You can see the butterfly has a little buddy

Yes, yellow flowers do present their own challenges.

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:16 am

Yes there are bonus bugs in the photo, two of them.

I use Photo Impact because it is more user friendly. I have PhotoShop Elements 4 and it is a pain to use most of the time and the program is inconsistant, one minute it does what you want and the next it does who knows what.

Usually what ever it does, it is quite unexpected, so I rely on a very old version of Photo Impact 6.

The Swallowtail was on these flowers in deep forest shade at the time, about midmorning I think, I had to wade through a thicket of nettles to get to it but after arriving there, it was still quite cooperative. I did use a flash, ETTL Canon 430EX, however I cannot recall if the flash was stopped down or not. Usually I have it set at -1/3rd or sometimes as low as -2/3rds. I like the first crop too but some folks tend to see different but of course it is all subjective as they say. Thanks!

Michigan Michael · Post by **Michigan Michael** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 10:59 am

Ken, beautiful photo.
You seem, however, to be overly concerned about overexposing the highlights in your recent posts. Keeping detail in he highlights is important, but not to the detriment of the overall appearance of the photo. Perhaps it is my monitor (or yours), but the photo here appears too dark and might tolerate a bit more brightness or "snap". Just a suggestion.

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 11:45 am

Michigan Michael wrote:

...the photo here appears too dark and might tolerate a bit more brightness or "snap".

You're not the first to comment on that. I don't know.

They all seem to look fine on my monitor, though it is set at its default settings, sRGB. NVIDIA Graphics are at default also.

Here of late I have been trying to watch my exposures, trying to maintain a comfortable degree of DOF while trying not to underexpose the images as I see them. If need be I lighten them using my software. Quite puzzling indeed. Thanks for note of observation Michael