Colourful Deluxe - _TNY_1554
If you ask a Swede what colour a "citronfjäril" (our name for the brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni) which means "lemon butterfly") is, pretty much everybody will tell you it's a simple pale yellow all over.
Well, for starters, the males and females are not the same hue (this is a male) and nobody knows about the beutiful purple shoulder they have. Also, the colour is actually quite intense.
These guys show up in March and are still flying in September. They actually become unusually old and specimens that have hibernated through the winter are sometimes still alive when the next generation is hatched in early July.
Typically the Canon MP-E65mm lens is a very poor choice for butterfly photography. Of course it produced *very* sharp images and whith a maximum possible magnification of 5:1 it reaches where normal macro lenses can only dream of covering.
The problem is the working distance. The subject has to be single digit centimeters in front of the lens (at 5:1 it's about 4 cm) which ninetynine times out of a hundred means the butterfly is long gone before anything is in focus.
When they do sit still though, you end up with wonderful shots. This was taken in my mother-in-law's garden where she obviously breeds very courageous brimstones as this was taken at 3.3:1 magnification (and just slightly cropped).
Colourful Deluxe - _TNY_1554
If you ask a Swede what colour a "citronfjäril" (our name for the brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni) which means "lemon butterfly") is, pretty much everybody will tell you it's a simple pale yellow all over.
Well, for starters, the males and females are not the same hue (this is a male) and nobody knows about the beutiful purple shoulder they have. Also, the colour is actually quite intense.
These guys show up in March and are still flying in September. They actually become unusually old and specimens that have hibernated through the winter are sometimes still alive when the next generation is hatched in early July.
Typically the Canon MP-E65mm lens is a very poor choice for butterfly photography. Of course it produced *very* sharp images and whith a maximum possible magnification of 5:1 it reaches where normal macro lenses can only dream of covering.
The problem is the working distance. The subject has to be single digit centimeters in front of the lens (at 5:1 it's about 4 cm) which ninetynine times out of a hundred means the butterfly is long gone before anything is in focus.
When they do sit still though, you end up with wonderful shots. This was taken in my mother-in-law's garden where she obviously breeds very courageous brimstones as this was taken at 3.3:1 magnification (and just slightly cropped).