Swallowtail Manual Focus
I have been practicing manual focusing with my Canon FDn 80-200mm F4 lately as I am planning to head to Pinnacles National Park for some hiking this coming weekend. If lucky, I might see some endangered California Condors there. This is probably the first time I leave my DSLR at home as I really want to reduce the weight on my back especially for long hikes and oversea travel. I also got myself a Camelbak Motherlore as a makeshift camera bag. I took it to Easter Sierra for hiking and it 's way more comfortable than the CaseLogic camera bag that I used to carry. Plus, the Camelbak comes with a mil spec hydration pack in a separated compartment ---- perfect for long hikes. Anyway, back to this image. I saw some swallowtail butterflies at Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge today. During noon time, they are extremely active and normally it 's very hard to capture their images. The best time is early in morning when they are more subdued. But I really wanted to take some pictures of them today. So I staked out right next to a tree and waited. I observed their flying patterns. They came and went in full circles. This particular one always came back to land on the plant as shown in the image. So I pointed my camera toward that plant, set the focus, and waited for the monarch to sow up. It finally did. I took a few shots and again I was surprised by the lack of contrast at F5.6 and 200mm focal length. I uploaded the images to my laptop and converted the RAW files into TIFF using Sony Image Data Converter after choosing the daylight preset for the white balance. I then exported the TIFF file to Lightroom and made some tweaks on the contrast, sharpness, and color. Again the histogram showed no data in the dark area and there was no overblown highlight as well. The weird thing is the dynamic range seemed to be compressed. I 'm not sure if this was caused by the optics. The details, however, were there. But it 's lacking the micro-contrast. So here is the final image.
Swallowtail Manual Focus
I have been practicing manual focusing with my Canon FDn 80-200mm F4 lately as I am planning to head to Pinnacles National Park for some hiking this coming weekend. If lucky, I might see some endangered California Condors there. This is probably the first time I leave my DSLR at home as I really want to reduce the weight on my back especially for long hikes and oversea travel. I also got myself a Camelbak Motherlore as a makeshift camera bag. I took it to Easter Sierra for hiking and it 's way more comfortable than the CaseLogic camera bag that I used to carry. Plus, the Camelbak comes with a mil spec hydration pack in a separated compartment ---- perfect for long hikes. Anyway, back to this image. I saw some swallowtail butterflies at Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge today. During noon time, they are extremely active and normally it 's very hard to capture their images. The best time is early in morning when they are more subdued. But I really wanted to take some pictures of them today. So I staked out right next to a tree and waited. I observed their flying patterns. They came and went in full circles. This particular one always came back to land on the plant as shown in the image. So I pointed my camera toward that plant, set the focus, and waited for the monarch to sow up. It finally did. I took a few shots and again I was surprised by the lack of contrast at F5.6 and 200mm focal length. I uploaded the images to my laptop and converted the RAW files into TIFF using Sony Image Data Converter after choosing the daylight preset for the white balance. I then exported the TIFF file to Lightroom and made some tweaks on the contrast, sharpness, and color. Again the histogram showed no data in the dark area and there was no overblown highlight as well. The weird thing is the dynamic range seemed to be compressed. I 'm not sure if this was caused by the optics. The details, however, were there. But it 's lacking the micro-contrast. So here is the final image.