butterflies Archives - Orion's Cold Fire

31MAY2026 – Photo of the Day

May 30, 2026May 30, 2026 photog 2 Comments Photography butterflies, Insects, Photo of the Day, Sony 90mm f/2.8 macro lens, Sony A7 IV

19JUL2025 – Footloose and Fancy Free

July 20, 2025July 19, 2025 photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner, Photography auto show, automobiles, butterflies, photography, Sony A7 IV, Voigtlander 10mm f\5.6 lens

Okay, a break from the political stuff today. Camera Girl and I took a day off (sort of). There was an antique car show to go to and used that as an excuse to gallivant around and eat some bad food and visit some of our old stomping grounds.

When we got to the car show there were only two cars there; an ancient VW micro-bus and a not-so exciting 1980’s Chrysler of some sort. We asked someone at a nearby business and they explained that the show builds up over time and if we came back in a couple of hours it would be much more substantial.

Okay.

There’s an old-fashioned food stand that’s only open in the summer. It serves burgers, foot-long dogs, fries, fried onions and fried fish. Many years ago, some of our kids worked there in the summers. Well, suffice it to say, this isn’t exactly health food. But, so what? We were out and about and foot-long hot dogs with mustard and relish was exactly what I wanted. The batter fried onions were questionable from my perspective but I followed Camera Girl’s lead on that front. Well, no major gastroenterological damage was noted after this meal so we proceeded back to ground zero.

And, voila! Classic cars from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. And as a background for this automotive time machine was a loudspeaker blasting out the doowop hits of 1960 – 1963. Of course, I was in kindergarten at that point but I of course recognize and enjoy these golden oldies. If only I had my leather jacket and enough hair to sport a DA and if Camera Girl had been wearing her pink sweater and poodle skirt we could have danced the afternoon away. Well, that is if I could dance. But no, I settled for a few off-key falsetto notes to “Why Do Fool Fall in Love?” and left it at that.

Well, I put my 10mm Voigtlander super-duper wide-angle lens on my Sony A7IV and clicked away for an hour or so. But then I was reminded that this show comes back every week so we left and headed home for a few more photos around the yard. So far this year there haven’t been many prime butterflies. Mostly only the medium sized ones, Fritillaries and Painted Ladies and such.

But as I walked around, I ran into a Monarch and I chased it around in circles for a quarter of an hour. It was incredibly skittish and I was aggravated by its evasiveness. Finally, I had enough and put my camera away and sure enough as soon as I did, that darned thing calmed down and almost seemed to be following me around, hanging at my elbow. This ticked me off so I waved my arms and ran after it and chased it away. Anyone watching would have assumed I was a hopeless idiot. And come to think of it there may be something in that.

But all in all, a very enjoyable day out with the missus. July in New England really is a pretty great time of the year. Too bad it ends so quickly. But all good things must.

Using the Sony FE Telephoto 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS as a Macro Lens

November 27, 2019November 27, 2019 photog Photography, Photography Reviews butterflies, cone flowers, dragonfly, flowers, insect, solitary bee, Sony A7 III, Sony FE 100 - 400mm f/4.5 - 5.6 GM OSS telephoto lens

I pride myself in not having much in the way of conventional sense when it comes to photography. I started very late in life and self-taught myself the little I know the hard way, by making an enormous number of mistakes. So last summer I rented the Sony 100-400mm GM lens and in addition to taking shots of birds in trees and other obvious telephoto targets I tried my hand at using it as a macro lens. Now it wasn’t really a macro. Each of these photos is a massive crop from the original file. But I wanted see if I could get the resolution and focus needed to take insect photos. The answer is yes and no. Yes in the sense that if you’ve got blazing sunlight you can shorten the exposure enough to make up for the difficulties of a long lens and monopod stability (or instability) without the ISO going too far up. But no, in the fact that you can do the same and better with a 90mm f2.8 macro lens without having to stand in the next county.

The results are respectable and show that the lens is very sharp. And I’ve become more appreciative of my macro lenses. I’ll put up a second post later on the more conventional telephoto capabilities of this lens.