Picture of the Day: Macros & Butterflies

The SF Conservatory of Flowers is holding a special butterfly exhibit from March to October. I tromped up there early this morning to get ahead of the crowd. I wanted to play around with some of my Hoya Closeup Filter(which, unfortunately, only fit my 50 mm lens).

I had to manually focus on a majority of the butterflies; no tripod either. It was actually rather annoying, and I missed more shots than I could count, just because the butteflies are so damn “fast” (in relation to me having to compose, focus, AND shoot). I had a lot of images with blurred movement. But I think I got a few good ones overall. The DOF is rather nice, and there were a few butterflies and moths that were willing to sit for a while and “pose”.

This outing also gave me a chance to try out the Field Vest which I wanted to use in leiu of an actual camera vest. And I have to say, it worked out nicely, with a few little quirks that I have to get used to using.