The Olympia Camera Club takes a field trip each month.  When winter comes, it’s a bit difficult to take trips that involve outside photography, so this month we took a trip to Seattle to the Butterfly House at the Seattle Science Center.  Chasing butterflies around the hothouse wasn’t too difficult as there were plenty just sitting on flowers or leaves.  What I found to be difficult was getting enough depth of field to get the complete butterfly in focus.  I took my 105mm f/2.8 macro lens but really was not able to shoot at f/2.8 due to the fact that the butterflies are generally not on a flat plane to the camera.  Even at f/7.1 I was still frustrated.  I think the solution is to take a flash unit and shoot a high shutter speed and also about f/16 to get the complete insect in focus.  A flash will also allow me to keep my ISO down low to help retain detail.  As it was I was shooting up ro ISO 1600 with my D800e.  I was  also wishing that I had had my 70-200mm f/2.8 so I could stand back more from the butterflies and still get close-up shots.  I’m really looking forward to doing this again.  Practice makes perfect – well close, anyway.

After we had our fill of shooting butterflies, we drove up to Kerry park to shoot the sunset over the Seattle skyline.

Here is a sampling of what I shot that day. For the complete gallery, click here.