Butterflly

[Douglas Bolt]

Canon 7D, 400 DO with tubes, f6.3, 1/1000, ISO 1600, monopod, cropped from horizontal. Reduced noise and blurred background, sharpened butterfly, and tilted a little.

Same image going into OOTB with filters.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Douglas,
Nice pose and isolation.....do wish the rear wing was a touch sharper but is probably due to DOF fallof.....and going with more DOF......may have changed the BG too much.....but with that lens, I suspect not too drastically. Always a trade off in photography.......not sure you needed that much ISO or SS......so just keep that in mind for next time out. Glad to see you out there practicing!

[Ken Childs]

Douglas, in addition to what Roman mentioned, I feel the BG could use another round of noise reduction. I think I'd prefer a tighter crop and I'm shocked that Roman didn't suggest it. He's the King of the crop tool! :D

[Roman Kurywczak]

Douglas, in addition to what Roman mentioned, I feel the BG could use another round of noise reduction. I think I'd prefer a tighter crop and I'm shocked that Roman didn't suggest it. He's the King of the crop tool! :D

he, he, he.......they've got me on a 10 step program for the crop tool......must say it isn't working too well:2eyes2:! 1 Day at a time Ken!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nice idea but I think from this angle f6.3 is a little wide, f8 or f11 would probably still have provided sufficient shutter speed and the shot would have been that bit sharper.

[Steve Maxson]

I like your comp and the image is sharp where it most needs to be, Douglas. The colors in the background are very nice, but like Ken, I'm noticing noise in the background. I think you could have gotten this shot, with less noise, at ISO 800 and SS 1/500. :) Something you might try next time.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Doug, very nice comp, and as mentioned, sharp where it needs to be. I like the color combo in the BG and some noise work is a easy fix.

[Douglas Bolt]

Regarding the high ISO and fast shutter speed, I started out using ISO 400. The butterfly exhibit was inside a greenhouse with a fair amount of screening and we were not allowed to use a tripod, plus it was crowded with lots of kids and other photographers. I ended up putting the end of my monopod in my side pocket, just to keep it out of the way of others. At 400, I didn't see any usable images, due to motion. 800 was a little better, but still nothing that looked usable via chimping. ISO 1600 did give be several images where at least some of the insect was in sharp.

Regarding my noise treatment, I masked the background and did a "reduce noise" and a Gaussian blur - don't recall how much of each, but obviously, from this discussion, not enough.

Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate you taking the time to offer your help.

[Ken Childs]

Hey Doug, I don't know how well it works in CS5 but in previous versions of Photoshop, the 'reduce noise' filter didn't work very well. I use Neat Image and it works great! I've heard good thing about Noise Ninja and Topaz DeNoise but I haven't used either of those.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I have used Neat Image - I like it you can get a freebie for smaller images, i recently bought Topaz Denoise 5 - I think it is excellent and I got it for $49 after trialling denoise 4 - really recommend it!

[Douglas Bolt]

Thanks for the reminder about Neat Image. I have it and used it with CS4, but have not yet installed it in CS5. Not sure why (can't recall even trying), but I should because it is more effective than the Reduce Noise filter in CS5.

[Anita Bower]

The colors in this image are striking, starting with the butterfly. The butterfly's different colors help it stand out from the bg and the flower. Beautiful soft bg. Very nice.