Pimpampelen
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Alison and I made a trip to the butterfly garden in Grevenmacher. This time the temperature was a bit more comfortable than the 40°C in the World of Butterflies. We only had one macro lens between the two of us so we took turns in photographing and holding a flash for one another. We started out with the ringlight adapter but moved on to a DIY diffuser to light the butterflies. It’s quite useful to be able to sculpt the light the way you need it to be rather than being at the mercy of the sun shining through a glass roof and foliage. I used the Pocketwizard Mini TT1 and Flex TT5 to allow the camera and flash to communicate with one another. Setting the flash power manually would have been tricky, since we worked without tripods. At those small distances, a few centimeters change in the distance between flash and subject can make a big difference. (Inverse square law: if the flash is giving me a correct exposure at 1/8 power and 10cm distance, if the flash moves 5cm closer the power needs to change to 1/32. ETTL takes care of this on the fly.)
So my technique here is to get the aperture I need for a decent depth of field, then dialing in a shutter speed and ISO that get me enough ambient light for a photo that’s slightly underexposed, then bring in the flash to get the exposure to where it needs to be.
(For those wondering what the title means: it’s one of the Luxembourgian words for butterfly.)
World of Butterflies
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Alison found out about the MacFarlane’s World of Butterflies in Swingfield. We went there after exams, I played around a bit with the Ringlight adapter I bought recently and borrowed Alison’s 100mm Canon macro for some shots (that piece of glass has got to go on my to buy list). A pretty cool, albeit small place! The downside was that it was about 40°C in there. I waited for fifteen minutes until my lens de-fogged. (Temperature changes from cold to hot can result in condensation, which can lead to an early death for electronics. To avoid it on your camera just put it in a plastic bag, the condensation will form on the bag instead of your camera.) It was incredibly hot in there; we stayed longer than any other visitors. Fortunately they sell drinks and ice creams there. Even so nobody wanted to sit next to us on the bus back home…