Painted Lady

[Lava Lamp]

Shot with D70 and 75-300. Please share your comments and suggestions for improvement.

Thanks for catching my weird typo, Kristen.

[kkraczek]

Hi Lava Lamp, this is a beautiful photo... I love the colors, and I'm always amazed at how you manage to get these creatures against such beautiful backgrounds. The DOF is perfect as well!

Now, just one thing... I was a little curious as to what a post titled "pained lady" was going to contain, so I was glad to see that it's a painted lady rather than the alternative! ;)

Nice work!

[PuckJunkey]

Great shot... wouldn't change a thing.

[stew]

Great colors, good DOF, interesting subject. Very well done!

-Stew

[SmartWombat]

Shot with D70 and 75-300. Please share your comments and suggestions for improvement.

Nice photo, interesting background. I've usually only got butterfly shots on flowers where they feed, just because they're easier to find that way
I've been trying to photograph insects in the wild for over 25 years, and know how hard it is!

You've got a problem with butterflies, because the antennae will usually be outside the DoF. Whether you shoot from the side, or from the front, you'll always have that problem of separating them from the background without losing parts fo their anatomy out of focus in the process.

Was this hand held, or on a tripod?
Looks like available light, no flash, which makes it much harder!

I tried loading it in PS, and it doesn't look quite sharp.
I can't make out the hairs on the head that I know are there in the vanessid family.
I wonder if that's an artefact from shrinking it to the dimensions/file size for upload?


The top of the wing doesn't seem to have that critical sharpness. The near antenna is outside the DoF, the nearest "knees" are in focus, but the feet aren't, and the far knees don't look in focus.


My main problem has always been balancing DoF (longer exposure, small aperture) against available light and what I could hand-hold. I tried various techniques and multiple flashguns, or a tripod (and often both) gave me what I thought then were good pictures.

You've made me want to go back through my slide collection and fish out a few of my old pictures and look at them more critically. I just got my Dimage Scan Dual working under XP (it's not meant to!) and so I can at last go back over my old negatives/slides.