Photographing butterflies

It's that time of year when butterflies are starting to appear and thoughts turn to how best to capture them 'on film'. For many people, the first thought is to turn to a macro lens - the EF100mm f/2.8 USM being a favourite. However, the reality is, unless your butterfly is very still - early morning for example - the 100mm lens is not really going to cut the mustard. More usefully, the EF180mm f/3.5L Macro USM lens will give you a greater working distance while still providing the magnification you're looking for.

However, for many the 180mm macro is a little out of budget for such a specialist item. A really good butterfly combination is to put together two tips we've previously the talked about on the site: The EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM and Extension tubes.

If you put these two togther, you can get closer than the 1.4m minimum focus distance of the lens would usually allow, and also increase the magnification - up to 0.42x (nearly half life size) with an EF25 II tube. This gives you the flexibility to zoom as well, and has the added advantage that when you use extension tubes, you can really blow out the background to keep the subject standing out.

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A star in the range - EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM

What, no Tuesday 'tog? Yes, it it is Tuesday, no, you're calendar is not wrong and no, there is no Tuesday 'tog today. Don't worry, there'll be one next week, we just thought we'd give it a break for a week while we take stock of where the blog is going and what it's going to do.

So this week, this is the start of a new mini-series picking out some of our favourite lenses in the Canon range. Some may be familiar to you, some maybe not, but all of them are lenses we've used and found to be cracking. First up this week is the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens. Now this lens is a great favourite of ours and is in fact well like by many photographers. Sadly though, it is often overlooked in favour of the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM in the belief that that f/2.8 lens is better.
Well, for all those that bought f/2.8 lenses - sorry! The f/4 lens is actually as good or better than the f/2.8 lens at any aperture. It's a much newer optical design and hence improvements have been made.

When looking at lenses, there are four things you're likely to consider:
Optics
Image Stabiliser
Weight
Price

If we take the optics first, as we said above the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM more than holds its own.
Image Stabiliser: f/2.8 = 3 stops, f/4 = 4 stops
Weight: f/2.8 = 1470g, f/4 = 760g
Price: f/2.8 = c.£1550, f/4 = c.£980

To make it simpler, you get better hand-holding ability, a weight saving of 710g (that's nearly half the weight) and a cost saving of about £570. Pretty clear cut isn't it?!

So, with the optic quality being equal and everything else being better on the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens, you may wonder why people still buy the f/2.8 lens. Well, the answer is simple - they shoot in low light or they use extenders. With extenders of in low light conditions, the f/2.8 lens is still king becasue it focuses better and keeps a larger maximum aperture. If you fit a 1.4x Extender the max perture drops by 1 stop taking the f/2.8 lens to f/4 and the f/4 lens to f/5.6 In bright light, this doesn't make too much difference, but once the light levels drop, having an aperture a stop wider can help with focusing.... not exposure though. Let's be clear on this = most people still have the film or early digital mindset. In other words "I can't take the ISO over 400 or I'll see noise". If you're shooting on one of the latest cameras, this doesn't matter. You can up the ISO further, still avoid undue image noise, and effectively counter the exposure loss of one stop.

For all those that do have the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens and are thinking you'd be better off with the f/4L IS version - don't worry. If your lens is in good condition, you should be able to sell it second-hand for more than the cost of a new f/4L IS lens. Just don't send any prospective purchaser to this page first!



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