Before you swat that annoying mosquito that’s just sucking your blood, hold on. This week is Insect Week. I have generously given a lot of blood to mosquitos over the past few weeks and didn’t even get any photos of them in return. Instead, I tried to photograph butterflies in flight. With a fairly heavy 500mm lens, this is quite a challenge, but great fun and excellent practice for photographing birds in flight. Just give it a try. But before you head out to a meadow somewhere, check out the photography news as we approach the halfway point of 2024.
Recent Announcements
- Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4: This lens is the surprise of the summer season. Apart from the f/1.4 aperture and the absence of the “S” designation, what else is surprising? Perhaps the size, weight, and price. Compared to the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 S, the new lens is a few millimeters longer and thicker, 45 grams heavier, and $100 “shorter.” Will we see image quality compromises? You can read a more detailed analysis and full specifications here.
- Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 DC DN Contemporary: This standard zoom for APS-C cameras is not actually new at all. It was introduced in October 2021, first for Sony E and Leica L, then for Fuji X cameras. But the milestone is that this is the first available Sigma lens for Canon RF. It looks like the arrival of the first swallow in the summer sky, heralding a flock of other third-party lenses that will soon follow for Canon. At least in the APS-C segment.
The Rumor Mill
Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4: I AM not a replacement
According to Nikon Rumors, the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 is not taking the place of a super-fast 35mm f/1.2 S. Not only that, apparently the new Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 is the founder of a new f/1.4 dynasty. It should soon be followed by a 50mm f/1.4 lens, also without the “S” in its name. How will these lenses perform? We will be looking for answers to this question soon.
Upcoming announcement of Canon R1 and R5 Mark II
The story of great waiting and anticipation will come to an end in the third week of July, according to Canon Rumors. The exact date of these highly anticipated camera announcements is unknown (July 17 is speculated), but in less than a month, we should know everything essential about the two cameras.
Good Deals and New Sales
Summer vacation season has just begun, and it’s time to make a lot of memories – both the mental kind and the digital kind. Lots of memory card brands have brought back their big sales, and the following deals stood out to me the most:
SD cards
- SanDisk 1TB Extreme PRO UHS-II SDXC (was $620, now $300)
- Lexar 1TB Professional 1800x UHS-II SDXC (was $350, now $290)
- SanDisk 256GB Extreme PRO UHS-II SDXC (was $400, now $250)
- Lexar 128GB Professional 2000x UHS-II SDXC 2-Pack (was $330, now $200)
- Lexar 1TB Professional 1066x UHS-I SDXC (was $190, now $110)
- Pelican SD memory card holder for 12 cards (was $35, now $25)
CFexpress Type B cards
- Angelbird 2TB AV Pro MK2 (was $960, now $450)
- Delkin Devices 650GB BLACK (was $750, now $530)
- Lexar 256GB Professional DIAMOND Series 2-Pack (was $750, now $460)
- Lexar 512GB Professional DIAMOND Series (was $530, now $390)
- SanDisk 512GB Extreme PRO (was $600, now $160)
To conclude these deals and sales, a rather small reminder. When traveling abroad, remember that your destination may have a different standard of sockets than your home country. Think ahead and check the plug and socket types around the world before you go. Here you can look for universal solutions (those tend to be bigger, heavier and more expensive) or for an adapter for a specific type. I don’t see a lot of these on sale, but now’s the time of year that I wanted to give a reminder.
Other Pages of Interest
Mauna Kea, Ojos del Salado, or Monte Pissis are undoubtedly huge volcanoes. But in the competition for the largest known volcano in the solar system, they would all be overshadowed by another giant – Olympus Mons, a volcano on Mars. It was photographed in March this year by the longest-serving robot orbiting Mars, NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey. The volcano is so large that if we were to place it in Europe, it would be larger than many countries. Its base sprawls across 373 miles (600 kilometers), and its summit rises to 17 miles (27 kilometers) high.
The Black Stork is a lesser known relative of the White Stork. Why less known? First, this species is much less common – and unlike the White Stork, it never nests on human dwellings. It typically builds its nest in a tall tree in the middle of an extensive forest. However, one family of storks recently decided to build their nest not in a tree, but directly on the ground. This nesting, unique in Europe, was captured on camera by the excellent nature cameraman Lukáš Pich.
Next, a traditional dose of inspiration and maybe even an impulse to submit some photos next time. In the Hasselblad Masters competition, if you are successful, you could win a 100MP camera with two lenses and a creative fund of EUR 5,000. Not bad, don’t you think? And who won this year? You can find out on the Hasselblad website.
The same amount of money, only in Czech crowns, is available if you won the Czech Nature Photo Contest – something I mention because it’s close to home! This year again brought many great photos and one surprise. The overall winner was not a photo of one of the crowd favorites (like a bird or a mammal), but a group of spiders. Check it out here. And since this is insect week, I will wrap things up with a mention of the 2023 Insect Photography Competition, whose winners were just announced on the Royal Entomological Society’s website.
Photo Theme Challenge, Week #56
Last week’s theme was music, and you can see the results in this thread. Thank you to everyone for your submissions! This week’s theme is the night sky, and you can submit your results in this thread by Saturday, July 6, 2024!
Week #55 Results
Let’s check out some of the shots we received for the “music” theme, starting with vidmarko’s photo:
It’s a very emotive photo where you can almost feel the music being played.
Adam Sheridan shared an interesting shot where the subject isn’t just the performer, but also a kid in the audience wearing a cowboy hat:
I really enjoyed rjbfoto’s street photo of a musician in Cuba:
And then an atmospheric photo that Gusbatero sent of his son, a drummer:
Thanks everyone for submitting their photos in the challenge, and we hope to see more next week in the night sky theme.
The sales on the cards are over already. How disappointing.
Butterflies are very hard to focus on indeed. I should try again, but last time I did it was a big fail :D. (+ butterflies around are not as beautiful as the one you show here, so I guess it’s also a question of motivation ;) ).
Z 50mm 1.4 would definitely be a good match with ZF, I think. I’m using Canon EF with Fringer adapter quite much (and 100mm F/2 too… I love that lens). I’m eager to see what they could produce of that type.
When butterflies were still plentiful, I used to photograph them a lot, now only sporadically. What works best for me is a good strong zoom (mine is a 28-300) with a short minimal focus distance (mine is 1.2 feet, very important). Using an f/stop like f/8 and a shutter speed in the 125-200 range always gets me really special butterfly pictures. My experience has been that a 50mm would not work well at all if you are looking for closeup butterfly pictures. I hope this helps.
I think, at the moment I tried, it was really not a problem with gears, more with handling/getting used to their movements, shooting them while they’re flying – quite different from birds ;). Though, I must say I never thought of trying with shorter lenses like 70-200 or so, so I might give it a try indeed and thank you very much for the trick.
Birds are really beautifully predictable compared to insects. Anyway, try dragonflies. Now’s a great time to do it. A longer but lightweight lens like the 300mm f/4 or 500mm f/5.6 is perfect for this. Possibly a zoom with a longer reach as Elaine suggests.
I’ll stick with the 400mm F/4.5 I think … If I can go out in some places where I won’t be shot by hunters ;)
Yes, it’s a great lens (not only) for insects. I also sometimes get uncomfortable shivers down my neck when I shoot in the Czech countryside. I just hope that good optics will help hunters distinguish me from wild boar.
I see Elaine that the insect decline is truly global. Here in Europe, butterflies are almost gone too. According to some studies, about 75 percent of the insects have disappeared in Germany, and up to 98 percent in Puerto Rico. That’s an apocalyptic situation.
I know this is a bit off topic, but I noticed the decline in butterflies and bees when Wi-Fi went above 3G. Bumblebees and Monarchs (my observable bugs) became nervous and will hardly stay on a flower for even a second anymore. And then there were fewer and fewer of them each year. I haven’t seen a Monarch in three years, and my beloved bumblebees are barely around this year, and those that are, are very nervous. I can hardly imagine what Wi-Fi has to do with it, but my instinct tells me that that is the culprit. In my yard, we don’t use pesticides, weed killers or synthetic fertilizers, so we tend to be hosts to many bugs, but my beloved Monarchs are gone and my bumblebees are barely there.
The problem is that your garden is just a small oasis in the desert that cannot reverse the overall negative trend. I would say that the main culprit is intensive agriculture and the associated over-chemicalisation and extensive monocultures with minimal diversity and therefore a poor food supply (not only) for insects. We ourselves are such nervous bumblebees in our own gardens.
Pesticides, habitat destruction, and a changing climate are more likely culprits than 3G.
Logically, yes. I totally understand the impact of all those horrid challenges. But I just have a feeling that the airwaves that we are filling up have something to do with it. It explaines the extreme nervousness I see among the bumblebees. Their little nervous systems probably can’t handle all the microwaves and other waves that are ubuiquitous now. Something tells me that we can’t handle it too well either. Ever hear of tonsilstones before 10 years ago? And yes, I know it sounds crazy.
The most difficult thing about photographing butterflies in flight is their sheer randomness and unpredictability. At least I have a hard time getting inside their head ganglia and predicting which way they will go in the next second. It definitely helps to photograph larger butterfly species like the Morpho in the picture. They’re slower and the camera can focus them better. In other words, you can get further away from them and get more depth of field.
I have been busy photographing flying meadow damselflies and woodland damselflies for a while. Beautiful how these move, they look like elves! a disadvantage: they are only very active in full sun and preferably above running water.
I mean the: Calopteryx splendens and the Calopteryx virgo
These are beautiful, especially in good light. I wish you a successful “hunt”, Danny.
I wish Sigma would release their 18-50mm f/2.8 lens for Nikon Z, and Tamron their 17-70mm f/2.8 lens too.
I can’t think Nikon would object to them, as Nikon don’t make any Z DX f/2.8 standard zooms so these lenses wouldn’t compete with Nikon ones.
That would be great. I’ve waited so long, too long, for Nikon to come out with a fast stabilized lens like the 16-55/2.8 on APS-C that I finally lost faith. This was one of the reasons I switched to full-frame. Third-party lenses could actually help APS-C sales quite a bit.