Vanessa with 600 f/4 + 2x

Canon EOS 1Ds MarkIII, Canon EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM, Canon 2.0x TC, 1/1000 f/10, iso 800, handheld. Marcaria, Italy.

Usually, I carry with me only the equipment that I need for a specific subject: this afternoon, I was going to photograph herons and other birds, so I had with me only the 1Ds3, 600 f/4 and teleconverters. I have seen a lot of herons, but they were way too distant, even for the 600 f/4, so in the late afternoon I begun to wander around in search of other subjects. When I saw this beautiful butterfly - a Vanessa io, one of the most colorful butterflies of Italy - initially I gave up photographing it, since my macro lens was at home, and I didn't have even the tripod (I always handhold the 600 f/4). But this but butterfly was really too nice! I had to try!

The 600 f/4 is really not meant for macro photography - it has a reproduction ratio of 0.12x (1:8.3); to get a better magnification I mounted the 2x teleconveter, that gives a 1200mm f/8 with a RR of 0.24x (1:4.1). To get a sharp photo, I have used ISO 800 to get a fast shutter speed, and of course the image stabilizator helped me a lot. I stopped down to f/10, instead of using the widest aperture of f/8, because the image quality with the 2x improves a lot by stopping down of about 1 stop.

The result was this photo (here shown without any post processing):

Even though this is already an acceptable magnification, the butterfly does not stand out as I like from the surroundings. Luckly, the extra large 21 megapixels files of the 1Ds3 gives a lot of room for cropping - I cropped the photo until I got the composition that I wanted (that you see in the final post-processed photo that opens this article), and the final image still has a resolution of 6 megapixels, that is enough even for large prints.

A 100% crop from the processed photo. The image quality is pretty good considering that is taken with a lens that is far from ideal for macro!

The sharpness, as shown in the 100% crop, is pretty good, you can see the single scales and the little hairs on its eyes! The 600 f/4 and the other superteles are fully usable even with the 2x teleconverter.

After cropping, I increased a little the contrast and saturation, I reduced the noise (even though the 1Ds3, as the other Canon cameras, has pretty low noise at ISO 800, if you expose correctly the photo). I blurred a little the background, to increase the separation from subject, using the Paintbrush tool and a gentle Gaussian Blur - of course, I used the layer mask to apply the blurring only on the background, withouth compromising the detail of the subject.

Sometimes, it may happen that you don't have the right tools to photograph what you find - don't give up, try to get the best from what you have!

Comments and questions are welcome!

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