Help Capturing Butterflies in Flight

[abbypanda]

Hi,

Not sure where to put this (here or wildlife), but I went ahead and posted here b/c I see more talk of insects and butterflies here than wildlife. I do have a macro lens but I can not get good shots of butterflies in flight with it. It has gotten some very very nice still shots of them tho. It's a sigma 105 (not the os). It's extremely sharp and overall it's my favorite lens. For still stuff anyways!

I tried my 70-200 2.8 IS and I got some ok ones, nothing in focus.
This was the best I got with that lens:



The best I got was my 50 mm 1.4 and this was the result. This is probably the best I've done so far as far as capturing in flight. They look a lot better but I set it on 1.4 and the depth of field is very shallow I think?


What tips can you give me? Should I just focus where I think the butterfly will fly off to or the flower I think it will land on? I've had some success watching them and observing their habits, which has helped, but not enough. As of now I can tell when they are close to taking flight. When they start flapping their wings with increasing speed I just hold down the shutter release. There has to be a better way.

Thanks in advance for any help

[calypsob]

You could try using magic lantern. It is add on firmware that allows you to run scripts off of your canon. One function they have is called motion sensor and if you setup your camera on a tripod and get the picture in focus before the butterfly arrives, it will take the picture for you. If you are not comfortable with magic lantern then I suggest pre-focusing on the flower with the camera on a tripod and use an IR remote to trigger your shutter from a few feet away.

[abbypanda]

Calypsob, thanks! I should have known there'd be something out there to make it easy lol!
I'm gonna check this out, sounds quite simple. Anyone got any pics to share using it? Do most Ppl who take pics of insects and such in flight use something like this or are a lot of you doing it handheld?

Thanks again and sorry for my delay in response.

[adamsheehy]

I've only tried this once while in a confined indoor space. I just turned off the AF and focused in a general area where they were flying and didn't use a tripod or anything. Shutter was at 1/2500, f/3.2, ISO 2000. Took maybe 50 shots and got a couple that turned out alright, but nothing spectacular. Everyone has their own methods, so try a few different things to see which might work best for you.

[kriptikracing]

Originally Posted by adamsheehy

Nice shot! Is it just me or does the butterfly look like it caught a seahorse and is flying off with it? LOL, I know butterflies don't do that but it just looks like it.

[calypsob]

^ That is how most of my macro shots go, particularly on a cloudy day. 20-30 shots per subject and I usually wind up keeping 2 or 3 images per subject. If you have a fast focusing L lens then capturing a butterfly in flight with a high shutter speed is pretty probable. I would definitely agree that you would need to be at a shutter speed of 1/2500 or faster. I'm not sure what camera body you use, but if it accepts CF cards then you can pretty much hold down the trigger and machine gun the butterfly. I know a few birding and aeronautical photographers that use this technique with the 7D because it can buffer images so quickly. Another common tool that "in flight" photographers use is called a gimbal head. It mounts on a tripod and has a center weighted swivel which allows you to track your subject on a swivel 360 degrees and has an arm providing an X axis which allows you to track up and down as well.

[calypsob]

One suggestion I could make after observing the photos you have already taken is to increase your aperture a bit so you get a little more DOF with those butterflies.

[abbypanda]

Thanks guys, These are all good suggestions. I'll keep trying. I do agree about the aperture. The best I got was at 1.4 and that was the last one and the DOF is not too good. I guess I'll have to try on the tripod.

I do have a 7d, It does shoot quick, and this is what I generally do: hold it down and fire when the thing starts to flutter its wings to get ready to go. The macro lens I have is the sigma 105. I do like it a lot it has great sharpness. I read a lot of bad things on the auto focus so I did not try it with moving subjects but I suppose I should give it a shot.

I did look back through my shots, and I think they were all at iso 100 and the first two around shutter speed of 1/400s or 1/160s and the last one at 1/5000s.

I'm waiting for the monarchs to come around. I've only seen 2 so far this year!