Usually I only go out for a shoot on Saturday afternoons. Mainly either at the bird, butterfly or orchid park - all very near each other. I was not able to go out yesterday afternoon, so I went today - Sunday - instead, right after the aqiqah event.
I decided to head to the butterfly park to test out the shutter speed and how rapid the focusing respond was. I don’t think my 70-200mm was really cut out for butterfly work. To get a reasonable depth of field, I needed the close the aperture somewhat to f8.0. Therefore, I had to increase the ISO and even then, with the rather dimmed lighting inside the park, the shutter speed was shorter than I expected, leaving some of the pics rather blurred. The one that I was able to use were amazingly clear and sharp.
The high ISO performance was better than I expected. Yes, there were grains, but I was sure it was manageable with a bit of Photoshop ninja work. The 8 fps shutter speed worked as expected. I was snapping away, in RAW quite happily. The balance with the long lens was perfect. The focusing was how ever found wanting at times. The autofocus searched for more than a few moments, sometimes causing me to miss my shot. On a few occasion, it settled on a point which was out of focus. Maybe this were due to wrong point selection or, a wrong mode was used - I used single shot focus rather than servo.
Looking back, I may need to change my strategy somewhat for butterfly work. I may need a flash to allow me to use smaller aperture and lower ISO. That may be in a couple of weeks time then, after some research work of course!
The slideshow for the outing can be seen here.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 5:48PM 
