Camera ideas needed for butterflies (1 Viewer)

Bob here from alberta--Hi all!
Next year i would like to try to photo some butterflies--am on a limited income so could anyone give me an idea of what equipment I might consider buying. Thanks appreciate it BOB

Hi Bob,

I am certainly no expert and don't know what sort of budget you are on.

I have acheived reasonable (I think !) results with the Nikon CP4500 with the EagleEye Optic zoom lens (see here) and also with the CP4500 on its own in macro mode (see here).

I am sure others will have more expert opinions but a good macro mode seems an essential to me.

Bob, on a budget the cheapest short-term option might be a S/H 35mm SLR and zoom lens with macro facility. Not sure about in Canada, but here can apparently be tricky to find a film processor who’d hand back prints one’d be happy with at a good price. If you have easy access to a computer to view pictures (or, better still, to post process as well), then a digicam might be the better long term choice; little cost to take lots of pictures and easy to get your results into a photo processing program.
Robin’s suggestion looks like a good way to get quality results and have a very versatile camera. I’d certainly also look at digicams with built in long zoom lenses. Some of these hold quite good close focus distances even at the top of the zoom range which could allow you to get frame filling shots of butterflies at several feet from the subject without any add-on lenses. Should you decide that the camera you purchased can’t quite achieve the magnification you want at sufficient distance, a good quality add-on close-up lens such as the Nikon 6T should be cheaper than a good quality teleconvertor (which itself could have an impact on closest focussing distance).
At a price, the Canon S1 IS maybe has all the features that would interest you built in. For less outlay, one of the long zoom Fujis, for example, without quite the reach or image stabilisation, would probably do an excellent job.

Most of today's compact digicams have a much closer focussing option than the equivalent 35mm compacts so you probably have quite a range of options to suit your pocket.

If you want this type of camera look for one with a closest focus distance of at least 20cm at the telephoto end of the zoom range or 10cm at the wide end - quite a few will also focus even closer than these distances.

Also, one with a 'spot' autofocus point could be useful - those that have a sort of 'area' autofocus always seem to want to focus on the background, even if you've selected the 'macro' setting on the camera!

Adey Baker said:

Also, one with a 'spot' autofocus point could be useful - those that have a sort of 'area' autofocus always seem to want to focus on the background, even if you've selected the 'macro' setting on the camera!

Click to expand...

Good tip Adey. At the risk of going back to sounding like a Panasonic rep, must say the FZ series have this as well as spot metering...

I've taken shots I've been please with using an old Nikon FE with either a 70-210 zoom or a 135mm lens. I left buying a reasonable digital camera a bit late to get butterflies this year, but you should be able to get good shots with a decent compact digicam.

I will second the option of going digital. In the gallery, you should be able to find a few of my shots of butterflies taken with a Nikon cp4500 + the TC-E3 ED teleconverter. I have also a few moths that have been taken without any extras. Mostly, I cannot get close enough to a butterfly without using what corresponds to at least 300 mm in the old 35 mm language.

One of my friends just found an old model minolta (I believe the A1) with a long tele lens built in for what he thought was a very reasonable price. Yesteryears model with fewer pixels can often be a bargain.

HTH
Niels

Thanks for all the imput everyone. I will print all this off and keep for next spring.