Monarch butterfly slow motion video

Markr041 wrote:

1. I do not see that we learn a lot from very slow motion for butterflies or bees. Their action is pretty clear. Half speed seems revealing enough, and that permits shooting at 60 fps and 4K, with high resolution that brings out the very interesting details of these insects.

Thanks for this comment, Mark.  I definitely need to give additional consideration to the optimum frame rater for each subject.  So far, I'm finding the smaller the subject, the more likely a fast frame rate is useful, then as the subject size is increased, and the speed of their movements slows, a slower frame rate is better.  I will have to try the slower frame rates and get some additional experience vs subject speed.

2. Perhaps your views are sometimes a bit too close up, with the full butterfly sometimes cut off.

Definitely!  Now that I know what is possible, I can be more careful with the framing.

3. With a crop camera that crops even more at 60 fps, like the Canon R7, one can use a small telephoto with no extenders. In this case, a 18-150 zoom, be 3 feet away and get plenty of closeups of butterflies and bees. The camera has fast AF, needed for catching the fast appearance of these critters.

Understood.  I am going to experiment some more with my A1 and Tamron 150-500 as well.

Here is an example at 4K 60p slowed to 30p with a short telephoto zoom:

In many cases I could have come closer but I chose not to for aesthetics.

That's a good example of framing a little wider.  Thanks for that.