David Element
Wildlife Photography and Digital Video Images
____________________________________
Butterflies 50 – Pieridae – Cleopatra Butterflies
CLEOPATRA
BUTTERFLY Gonepteryx cleopatra
(m)
CLEOPATRA
BUTTERFLY Gonepteryx cleopatra
(m)
CLEOPATRA
BUTTERFLY Gonepteryx cleopatra
(m)
CLEOPATRA
BUTTERFLY Gonepteryx cleopatra
(m)
·
The
male Cleopatra Butterfly Gonepteryx cleopatra
has to be one of the most beautiful of European butterflies with its bright sulphur-yellow
wings and rich orange flashes on the upper-sides but there is a problem when
trying to photograph them as they always settle with their wings closed so that
the orange cannot be seen. If flash illumination is used then significant
under-exposure would be required to prevent the butterflies from appearing very
washed-out. One method of showing the colour to good effect is to photograph or
film these butterflies backlit by natural light and this had previously been
used successfully (and was again on this occasion) but the photographer was also
very keen to try to portray them with their wings fully opened during a visit
to the Ardèche region of Southern France where this
butterfly was one of the commonest species on the wing. The recent purchase of
a higher resolution camera (a Nikon D850)
has made it possible to obtain images of a much higher quality using natural
light than had previously been the case and quite a lot of effort was therefore
placed into trying to photograph them with their wings fully opened. Having
observed their behaviour at some length it became apparent that there were two
possible options for obtaining open-winged images of males and three for
females. As the butterflies feed on Lavender
Lavandula
sp. they would climb up the inflorescences using their wings to assist them
before moving on to the next stalk so if timed correctly sometimes the
upper-wings would be caught mid-flap. Easy enough in theory but once the
presence of an often quite stiff breeze was taken into account rather less so!
The other option was to try to take them in flight, so therefore shortly after
take-off and hopefully flying in the same plane as manual focussing was needed
to minimise the issues associated with auto-focus picking up a background object
instead. This proved to be a genuine problem when filming them feeding on the
multi-stalked Lavender plants but the bright sunlight made it impossible to see
the images on the preview screen required to use manual-focussing. The third
option that seemed to apply purely for females was their tendency to open their
wings (very briefly) in response to the approach of males but this was very
hard to predict – or indeed to photograph. Each of the photographs shown above
required good fortune as it is entirely impossible to predict the position of
the wings, or indeed if the butterfly will be in focus at all but one of the
wonderful aspects of digital photography is the ability to take very large
numbers of photographs when compared to transparency films from the pre-digital
age and then delete them, so what you see here are the successes. Much smaller
in numbers than the failures but very a very worthwhile investment in time
given the quality of the results. A comparatively high ISO setting is required
in order to obtain sufficient depth of field and no fast shutter-release
settings were used (so each is effectively a one-off). However newer digital cameras with better
quality sensors produce superb results at ISO settings that would have produced
far inferior and grainy images in the past.
·
A film of Cleopatra Butterflies may be seen at: https://youtu.be/2TdyJq6bkYA
- compiled from those clips for which the auto-focussing did work properly!
Butterflies 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 12,
13,
14,
15, 16,
17, 18,
19,
20, 21,
22,
23,
24,
25, 26,
27,
28,
29, 30,
31,
32,
33,
34,
35,
36,
37,
38,
39,
40,
41,
42,
43,
44,
45,
46,
47,
48,
49,
50,
51,
52,
53,
54,
55,
56,
57,
58,
59,
60
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