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Macro photography – small skipper butterfly

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By Simon Hawketts ·

Small skipper butterfly
Small skipper butterfly

This is another in my macro photography series, and this time features a small skipper butterfly.

I took this picture in the priors wood area of Stevenage in August this year with what is now my standard macro photography kit consisting of my Pentax K5 and Tamron 90mm f/2.8. To get this picture I cropped from a bigger image to produce this more detailed and closer image. I think the interesting thing about this picture are the small 'barbs' which appear on the butterflies legs. I can't find a reference to these in any of my butterfly books or on-line.

I had to apply quite a bit of noise reduction and sharpening in Lightroom because the iso was set quite high and the cropping magnified the noise somewhat. Overall I'm quite pleased with the quality of the image.

  • Pentax K5
  • Tamron 90mm
  • iso400
  • f/9.0
  • 1/160sec

Comments (8)

  1. gpcox
    The amazing things you see when you take the time to look up close.

    Comments (1)

    1. Simon Hawketts
      Yes I agree. I had looked at this picture many times but only saw the barbs when I applied sharpening
  2. Pat
    Wonderful shot.
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  5. Jeffrey Zablow
    Woe to the rest of us...if you ever decide to concentrate your fieldwork on butterflies alone. You show the eye and the skills to be very productive. This posted image of a Small Skipper, shows how close you are to sharing b-fly images that evoke a story line with them...That's what I think we along would like to be able to deliver. Jeff Zablow wingedbeauty.com Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Comments (1)

    1. Simon Hawketts
      well thank you very much for such nice comments
  6. absengeralois
    magic!