Friday, May 25, 2012

Butterflies at Brookside Gardens

Well I finally got to Brookside Gardens in Silver Spring, Maryland where during the sping and summer you can enter the Flight of Fancy butterfly exibit (cost 6 dollars). Shooting butterflies presents some unique problems. They are constantly moving and in order to get high depth of field you need a large f-stop but that might cause a slow shutter speed which will create blur if the butterfly is flapping it's wings. I have found that the answer is to constantly adjust iso (very low to 500) manual or apperature priorty try to stay above f-9. Sometime I have used a flash but the butterflies react to it sometimes. The use of a tripod would be great except it's not allowed in some live butterfly exibits, and in the field sneeking up on a butterfly is hard enough with just your camera in your hand and much harded with a tripod. A monopod never helped me. These pictures were taken with a Nikon D-300 I switched between the tameron 18-270mm lens and a 50mm G nikor lens with close-up filter...Gary



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