Butterflies in focus

If you wanted to test insect eye auto-focus, represented in the A7RV's menus by a butterfly, how could you resist visiting the Butterfly House at Melbourne Zoo? (Well, if you live thousands of kilometres from Melbourne, I guess you have an excellent excuse!)

Not all of these images were focussed on the butterfly's eyes, but the AF picked up the butterflies in every case, putting a box around the butterfly, and in some cases refining that focus to the head of the butterfly.

These images were shot on the A7RV using the Sony 70-200 GM II, at f/4. I had the minimum shutter speed set to 1/2000, but only until the auto-ISO got up to 12800.

The first gallery is of butterflies perched, although some were still moving their wings. Click on the gallery to see the images larger.

Please click on any photo to view in a lightbox. Use arrow keys or swipe to navigate.

And now something I was not expecting to work! I tried tracking a pair of butterflies in flight. That's a lot harder than tracking birds in flight, because butterflies do not fly smoothly - they flap wings that are far larger than their bodies.

These images were all shot at f/4 1/2000 and ISO 5000 or 6400. I've cropped them to remove distractions (in one image down to 3500x3500). You can see that in some of the images one butterfly is more sharply in focus than the other; I was not running tracking, just AF-C with Subject Recognition set to Insect.

Click on the gallery to see the images larger.

Please click on any photo to view in a lightbox. Use arrow keys or swipe to navigate.

#butterfly #Melbourne Zoo #Sony 70-200 GM II #Sony A7RV