Portrait of a Lady

These are not wild...we bought a kit with some caterpillars and all we needed to "make" Painted Lady butterflies. The kids love it, and I also got my macro set up out for the first time in a couple of years...

Here are a few shots, shot with M42 Vivitar 90mm f2.8 1:1 Macro lens and a variety of extension tubes. Cheapo ring flash.

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keep shooting them see if you manage for then to rest on a branch or something, so we don't see the net.

Warl0rd wrote in post #16834849
keep shooting them see if you manage for then to rest on a branch or something, so we don't see the net.

Well, a small disturbance as they emerge and them pump up their wings can cause defects and then they die. I need to be careful as it's all about the kids watching the development. Once the butterflies have toughened up in a day or two, we will introcuce some twigs and see how we go. We need to release them soon, though.

alquimista wrote in post #16835649
looking good!

Thank you.

i'd forgotten about Vivitar, Google suggests they went under, shame as I remember their 90macro was well thought of.
Looks like good fun "making" butterflies.

racketman wrote in post #16836114
i'd forgotten about Vivitar, Google suggests they went under, shame as I remember their 90macro was well thought of.
Looks like good fun "making" butterflies.

Not sure if my Vivitar is the one you're on about, but it's a nice lens...built like a tank, takes a good 3 turns of the barrel to go to 1:1. Makes a nice portrait lens too.

Cheers

Vivitar flashes were also very good, still got some 283's at home

A few more taken today.

The first is the butterfly that didn't emerge properly - you can see his proboscis is in two parts, so he is finding it difficult to feed, I think.

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Lovely series- I bet the kids found it fascinating
Brian V.

LordV wrote in post #16840032
Lovely series- I bet the kids found it fascinating
Brian V.

They did (I did too!)...and my daughter who is 8 and a keen photographer managed some macro shots too, which she couldn't do so well "in the wild".

Well, today was the day to release the butterflies. We released 4 of the 5 - the last one only emerged today, so we kept him behind to strengthen.
We also released the invalid butterfly - he wouldn't fly as his wings were not formed properly - and I doubt he would survive even if we kept him. Sadly, the ants took him while he was in the strawberry patch.

A great experience, though..and we plan to repeat it later. First though, we are going to send a batch of caterpillars to my daughter's class at school - they can watch some butterflies develop too.

1. A bit of sun before release:

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Nice shots, looking forward to some on a naturalistic background and substrate.

racketman wrote in post #16836114
i'd forgotten about Vivitar, Google suggests they went under, shame as I remember their 90macro was well thought of.
Looks like good fun "making" butterflies.

Yes, I remember that was the macro I wanted in my film days. Think I got married and bought house which put pay to that for a while,

Lester Wareham wrote in post #16845982
Nice shots, looking forward to some on a naturalistic background and substrate.

Not from this bunch - all gone now. The only shots I got on natural surroundings was the invalid butterfly.

I have been known in the past to do natural macro shots, but don't seem to get the time for that these days. :/