Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Small heath butterfly

Small heath butterfly
Voting period ends on 8 Apr 2017  at 14:29:55 (UTC)
 * Reason:illustrates this butterfly very clearly. FPC on Commons.
 * Articles in which this image appears:Small heath (butterfly)
 * FP category for this image:Featured pictures/Animals/Insects
 * Creator:Charlesjsharp


 * Support as nominator – Charlesjsharp (talk) 14:29, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Support – pity the ends of the feelers are out-of-focus, but overall very nice with good detail. —Bruce1eetalk 14:43, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes they always will be with a macro shot I'm afraid. DoF is only a few mm. Charlesjsharp (talk) 19:13, 29 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Support - The only way to get more in focus is to use a smaller aperture (f/14, for example), which would mean less detail on the scales, or focus stacking, which wouldn't work well with a live subject (File:Mealybugs of flower stem, Yogyakarta, 2014-10-31.jpg was the only decent result I got out of 50+ shots). This is great. I would prefer the image saved with less compression, however. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:22, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks Chris. After reading your comment, I checked a DoF chart and did a test. I reckon I took the picture 25cm away from this 18mm butterfly. With my 100mm macro lens at F11 I have 1.6mm DoF which is OK if you can get the insect absolutely square on to the camera. 1/400 sec was needed for hand held crouching near the ground. I then cropped to 60% of the original 5472 x 3648 pixels. At F14, the DoF only goes up to 2.0mm. F14 is two stops and also, my camera (like most) produces better images at F11 than F14. ISO 800 is the highest speed I can sensibly use, so it would not have been possible to use F14, even in the excellent lighting conditions I had. I'm not sure what you mean by 'less compression'. This image is not downsized, it is just cropped, then saved as maximum quality JPG. If I could get closer to the subject to use full frame (therefore no cropping), I reckon I would have been 13cm away. Unfortunately that would cut DoF to 0.3mm which doesn't work at all. Also, the butterfly would have flown away! And if it didn't for some reason, me and my camera would block out too much light and usually throw a shadow. Obviously there is no chance for proper focus-stacking in the field though one can sometimes manually stitch a couple of images together. It's all a carefully calculated compromise! Charlesjsharp (talk) 08:17, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yep. My comment "less detail on the scales" was meant to refer to the diffraction issues which leads to the camera (lens?) producing better images at F11 than F14, but in a way that non-photographers can understand. I didn't go into ISO etc. for the same reason.
 * I just opened the image in PS. It showed that you saved at a quality level of 10 (out of 12). That shouldn't lead to any noticeable JPG artifacts. Hmm... I'll PM you on your talk page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:15, 30 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Support - Looks good to me. Mattximus (talk) 02:13, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Support – Jobas (talk) 19:29, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Support - The butterfly is too furry. The eyes and nose can't be clearly shot. Marvellous Spider-Man  04:18, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Support --Mile (talk) 07:32, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Support - excellent shot! Kaldari (talk) 08:22, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

--Armbrust The Homunculus 16:32, 8 April 2017 (UTC)