Tuesday, August 07, 2012

[jules' pics] Mountain butterflies - and a bee.

butterfly
butterflies
butterflies
butterfly
butterfly
swallowtail
I don't know why, but they are so much more amazing seen on the mountain, than in the butterfly house. Can anyone tell me what kind the amazing big brown and white one is?

James is now making serious moves to try and adopt my new RX100 camera! It could be a tough fight. It was pretty cool carrying 1.5kg less stuff and the 20Mpixel resolution is phenomenal.

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 8/07/2012 05:25:00 PM

15 comments:

William M. Connolley said...

I don't think you give bees the prominence they deserve. Indeed I'm not totally convinced that is a bee.

andrewt said...

Chestnut Tiger (Parantica sita)

Oale said...

Damora sagana male with the Paratica sita.

Speyeria aglaja, with a regular Peacock Nymphalis io

ob said...

but it isn't a bee, is it?

jules said...

I thought someone might say it is not a bee, but "yellow and black buzzy thing" probably wouldn't have fitted comfortably on the title line.

Watch this space for more on yellow and black buzzy things!

jules said...

Thanks for all the names! I'd thought the orange ones were both just fritillaries... but there are all these others similar ones in this part of the world: http://ataxus.com/ak5t/japan/nymph3/a_nymph3.htm
I am not sure how you have identified the right ones!

We also saw a Red Admiral-like butterfly, but didn't get a photo. I wonder if it was also something uniquely Asian.

Oale said...

"but it isn't a bee, is it?", no, likely a largish hoverfly (Syrphid)

James Annan said...

There were certainly an awful lot of hoverflies around, but definitely a few bees too. We even brought back a pot of honey.

Rattus Norvegicus said...

So were these take with your Nikon or the RX100? (my guess is Nikon...)

jules said...

Ratty: As I indicated in the post, I didn't take my D90 with me. Spent the week practising with the RX100. Like all cameras it has some quirks, but it is very amazing per gram!

Hank Roberts said...

Wow.

Anybody want a well loved Leica IIIf?

I think I'm ready to change cameras.

jules said...

Hank: The RX100 is smal change compared to anything Leica, so why sell? :-)

I think that the trick with new cameras is to not compare the output between your own cameras (use the online tests others have done under controlled conditions for that) and give yourself some time (months!) to learn how to exploit the pros and cons.

For close-ups with the RX100 you either have to be 5cm (or more) from the subject at 28mm (and make sure the aperture is stopped down a bit, otherwise the image is not sharp, even in the focal plane), or 55cm away and full zoom (about 100mm equivalent) and rely on cropping. If you do nail the focus, the cropping ability is, however, amazing. The lack of any kind of focus scale makes manual focussing mostly too slow when, due to the necessity of progress along the mountain trail, time is of the essense . By the end of the trip I'd switched to continuous focus for these types of shots. It is fast, but exhibits a weird pulsing, so takes some concentration and practice.

Steve said...

Beautiful...

Rattus Norvegicus said...

I'm buying the RX100!

James Annan said...

Ratty,

at this point I should probably say it's the photographer not the camera.....but actually, it was the camera :-) It's early days but it really does seem to be fabulous - really closes the gap to the DSLRs (though it does have its limits) in an incredibly small size.