In this video I visit a butterfly house
to take on another 15 minutes photo challenge.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and you're
watching AdoramaTV, brought to you by
Adorama the camera store that has
everything for us photographers and
today you join me at the Earnley butterfly
house here in West Sussex for another 15 minute
photo challenge. Now I've got to be
honest I've never really photograph
butterflies and if you're thinking this
is going to be a how-to on how to do
amazing butterfly photos and natural
history, it’s the probably not going to be
that kind of thing I'm afraid, because
this is all about enjoying photography
and trying something new and coming to a
butterfly house like this gives me the
opportunity to do stuff that would be
much harder in the real world. Actually
the only thing I know about butterflies
for sure is if I step on one I'm going
to change the future of mankind
completely. So I'll keep an eye on my feet.
Ok let's have a wonder around and see what we can find.
Before I get going let's talk about
cameras. So I'm using my Olympus EM-5
Mark II and I'm using the 40-150mm
lens, which might seem like
the wrong lens for this environment.
Wouldn’t you want a macro lens?
Well the butterflies we’re photographing
are actually quite big, so that's not a
problem and if I had my standard 12-40mm
lens, I'd have to get really,
really close and these things can be
quite skittish so having a longer lens
being able to step back is definitely
going to make a difference.
So one other thing I'm going to warn you
about as well is when we came in here
everything misted up. The camera, the
sensor everything. The humidity in here
is about a hundred percent. So I have had to
let my camera acclimatise. Give it 20
minutes of just sitting around doing
nothing, so everything inside is warmed
up and I don't end up with images that
look really misty and horrible.
Speaking of images, there's a little
butterfly just here
I am just going to get my first shot.
Let's see what we can find.
So being a butterfly house they've got food
down for the butterflies to feed on and that
makes sense.
This is the easiest place to photograph
them but it's not particularly exciting.
So rather than going for the easy shot
I'm just going to try and find them
where they landed on leaves or even
maybe flying around. That might be a
challenge, trust me there are lots of
butterflies flying around here
lets just see if we can find some.
Let's talk about depth of field.
My natural instinct is at f/2.8. Nice wide
aperture lovely blurry background
because the backgrounds are absolutely
critical in this sort of environment
trouble is that's a shallow depth of
field. Now
micro four thirds I get extra depth of
field, so f/2.8 is almost like shooting
f/4, f/5.6 depth of field on a full-frame
camera. Which is great for this
environment I get more depth of field at
f/2.8 than I would normally but I get that
fast shutter speed of f/2.8.
Trouble is I’m not getting everything in focus. So I'm going
to try actually f/5.6.
Some of these bigger butterflies as well
it's quite nice to go in and get some tight
detail. The 150mm
lens equivalent of a 300mm on a full-frame
means that I can really fill the frame maybe a
little bit of post cropping to do inside
of Photoshop but sometimes it's just nice
to get the details as well as the wide shots.
You see, butterfly on the floor
don't step on the butterflies, the future
is in your hands.
So the obvious picture of butterflies I guess,
are the obvious ones where the wings are
out flat or closed but we've got the time
here and the number of butterflies to
find different angles so in this case
I'm shooting straight on to a butterfly.
If I can find it, there it is.
I'm focusing on the eyes just like I
would with a portrait it kind of seems
obvious to me whether it's the right
thing or the wrong thing to do I just
don't know that's what feels right and
I'm going to bracket my apertures as well.
Background's in photography are important
in every sort of photography and I guess
this is no different to anything else.
So I’ve got a nice littlel butterfly up
there, let me just take a shot and show
you what I'm seeing and I've got the the
roof lights behind it but watch what
happens if I just move myself a few
inches to the side, recompose the shot
it's still there.
Now the difference is
I've got a much more interesting
background, a much more complimentary
background where the original was just a
little bit to contrasty a little too
bright. Both look great in their own way. I
think I prefer the one with the greener
background.
Well, there we go 15 minutes in here was
a great amount of time and judging how
hot it is 15 minutes is about as long as I can
manage as well. Great opportunity to
photograph things like this if you get
the chance go the the butterfly house do take
it up and do take your camera along.
Right let's get one of these pictures
into Photoshop and see what we can do
there.
You can't really tell from the video
you've just seen but that butterfly
house was so hot and so humid it was
very uncomfortable to be in I couldn't
even wear my camera strap it was that
bad.
Now I have to wait for 20 minutes before
filming to let my camera acclimatize
to the humidity whilst I was waiting I
saw other photographers come in with
their camera gear try and take some
pictures and go away frustrated because
everything was just a cloudy mess and
what I'm going to do is show you how to
fix that mess and this is something that
happens not only when you're in that
kind of butterfly environment but anywhere
where you go from hot to cold .So you
could be going from a cold hotel
air-conditioned room out into a humid
country, then you're gonna need to know
this fix.
Now I'm going to show you the worst
culprit, the first picture the hardest
one to fix and this is what I started
off with and you can see straight away I
was in for a tough time. This just wasn't
going to work, I knew I'd have to wait
and get this sorted out but if you can't
wait here's the fix. I'm going to come
over to the FX tab here in Adobe Camera
Raw in Photoshop CC 2015 and beyond, and
then I'm going to find the dehaze
slider. On dehazeIi'm just going to
slide this along and as I slide it to
the right you can see how the haze
disappears and for this image I actually
think i'm going to have to go all the
way to maximum, which is not somewhere I
would normally go. Now if you're thinking
this is only a photoshop thing no it's
also in Lightroom as well.
The newer versions of Lightroom have
dehaze in the develop module and it works
exactly the same as Adobe Camera Raw.
However it's not quite a one-click
wonder, there's always a little bit more
work you have to do especially when you
use it this strong. So I'm going to
change from the effects tab back to the
basic tab and then I'm going to find
anything I need to change. Well i'm
looking at the image I reckon the white
balance is a bit towards the green end.
So let me get the tint white balance and
move that towards the Magenta's just to
try and take out some of that green. Now
everything else is probably going to be
a bit of personal preference
perhaps a little bit of the highlights. I
can bring those down slightly,
maybe we can come to the shadows,
open up the shadows a little bit. Maybe just
a little bump in the exposure as well
just a kind of brighten the whole thing
up.
Possibly a little bit of clarity just to
see how that looks as well and I think
that looks pretty good. Now it's worth
saying of course this isn't a panacea,
you really have to wait to get the very
best quality. This is the best fix you
can do if you find yourself with really
hazy images but compared to the original
image the fixed image is so much better
and it's an image that I could actually use.
There you go 15 minutes at the Earnley
butterfly house absolutely wonderful.
Perfect amount of time, great opportunity
to get some pictures but also 15 minutes
I'm absolutely sweating like crazy so
that's about as much as I can take. Now
if you want to see more videos from
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I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.