A few butterflies

frons

Here are most of the butterfly shots I've taken. C&C appreciated since I don't have much experience with them.

1. Here is an 8-shot stack of a Monarch pupa using Zerene and retouched with Capture NX2. Still trying to find the right parameters for stacked shots with dewdrops - many attempts actually look less sharp than the original frames :scratch



2. Solitary Monarch



3. Pupa of unidentified species, a 6-shot stack that didn't turn out all that sharp.


4. Another 3-shot Zerene stack, species unidentified.



5. Here is one of two shots of a common blue. The first I shaded from the sunrise. I tried to stack these two shots just to see what would happen, but it didn't work. :scratch



6. The second in full sunrise.

GOLDENORFE

very nice, like #5 common blue best
phil

frons

Thanks, Phil. I'm partial to #6 myself, but I am not sure why I prefer it.

Lord Vetinari

Love the last 2 shots - lovely light in both.

#1 the first stack is not bad but some mis-alignment on the top left.
The #4 stack has also worked pretty well but has produced a rather complex photo with perhaps too much of the background in clean focus.

Not sure how you are taking the pics for stacking but obviously it works best with no movement of camera or subject between shots (apart from focus movement) - it is fairly common to find some areas where the alignments are not correct because something did move but these can be corrected by copying the affected part from a single shot back onto the stacked shot (think this can be done within zerene although I haven't tried that). I normally just clean up the image in PS often using the repair brush to copy from single shots back onto the stacked shot.

Brian V.