Pearl Crescent butterfly

[Allen Sparks]

Canon Rebel XT, Sigma 150mm macro lens plus Sigma 1.4x EX teleconverter
ISO 400, f16, 1/200s, hand held, pop up flash

This tiny butterfly really posed for me first thing this morning. They are about the size of a quarter. I shot it a number of different ways but in the end the image using the pop flash is the one I liked the most. Any comments appreciated.

[Ken Childs]

Allen, the bfly is a bit worn but your capture of it looks great! A slight CCW rotation might make it look even better. The uneven BG is problematic but this species usually perches and feeds close to the ground so it's always difficult to get a nice BG when shooting them. You probably could have used a wider aperture and still have all of the bug in focus but with the leaves so close, it probably wouldn't have made much difference other than allowing you to use a faster SS.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Allen,
When I do my macro workshops I try to show people how powerful that pop up flash really is! It does piss me off that a $5,000 camera body doesn't have one! Keep the video on the Mark 4 (same for the mark lll)....give me a pop up flash!
This works for me all around......yeah, he's beat up a bit.....but the DOF and BG work just fine for my tastes. Both antenna sharp too so very well done all around!

[Julie Kenward]

I also like it although the image feels a bit dark to me. I'd love to have seen this with a bit of CCW rotation that led to the wings being closer to opposing corners but you did very well as is.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I like the image very much, for me the butterfly is a little large in the frame, though I suspect you did not want to include a cluttered or distracting background. I agree a little anticlockwise rotation would assist I would also suggest just a little more sharpening. I understand why you used fill in flash but I would suggest you set it to less fill in, see the far left orange patch on the left wing.