Small Copper Eye

Got my reversing coupling ring today so I've attached a 55mm lens in reverse onto the front of a Sigma 150mm macro lens to see what it can do. This is a Small Copper butterflies eye which I would guess is about 1.5-2mm wide. Lighting still needs some work as I had to shoot at a fairly high ISO and had to noise correct a lot so plenty of scope for further improvements. Just wanted to see what it could do. This is a fair crop of a 25 image handheld(but braced) stack.

I had to google a "small copper" to see what you'd got, and then i had to scan through about 50 images before i even saw a pic with an eye visible.

The eyes are very prominent compared to other butterflies.

Knowing all of that I'm now even more impressed with your pic, and looking forward to seeing what a tripod held stack would do

jim

Cheers Jim, these are supposedly common but I have only ever seen this one, that was after he expired and I found him in the greenhouse last summer. To do this properly I really need to find the sigma tripod collar and use a tripod with this rig due to the weight. Frustratingly I put it 'somewhere safe' as I rarely use it so I am going to have to do some digging through the kit boxes/ bags later tonight.

hah, the good news is you stored a butterfly for 6 months, who cares about a tripod collar ?
if desperate put camera on a box, and move the butterfly eye into focus on something else :)

He he, its only dumb luck I relocated the butterfly when I started clearing the greenhouse for this years seedlings... I've also found the tripod collar so I'm on a roll at the moment! :D

Here you go :)

Thanks for posting, I like this angle more as you kind of know what you’re looking at. It’s only recently that I’ve started to see butterflies and moths this close up and realise their incredible details

Thanks, in all fairness I was trying to go for a more abstract look with the close crop but I have to say I also prefer the later attempts. There is a huge difference in layer counts between them. The first was 25 images and the last one was 66 images, not sure if I could have gotten all of them to align properly without the tripod keeping it all steady.

Shame we can’t get the full size images here on dprevived, hope that’s gonna be fixed. I think the 2nd set are better in that you know it’s a flutterbye, but then looking in closer at the eye pic you realise the details keep getting better
Glad you found the bits to make it work
I love the freedom handheld gives, but i also like to take my time and stack (and wait around for the pc to give up the results) both have their uses

Good shots , nice detail .

Thanks Neil!