Butterfly Photography: A Beginner's Guide

As an avid naturalist keen on butterfly photography, I eagerly await the arrival of these beautiful creatures.

From the early emergence of Brimstones to the spring flying Orange Tips, and onto the colourful species that brighten up the summer months, my lens is always ready to photograph butterflies.

This guide is packed with beginner-friendly photography tips to improve your skills and help you capture stunning, memorable images.

Small Copper - taken with 100-400 mm lens at f22

Quick links

Getting Started with Butterfly Photography

Butterfly photography demands patience, persistence, and knowledge of your subject's behaviour and habitat. To start, equip yourself with:

A good camera featuring a macro or telephoto lens for detailed or distant shots
A sturdy tripod for stability, especially with slower shutter speeds
A remote shutter release or camera timer to prevent camera shake
Consider a polarizing filter to minimize glare and enhance wing colors

Let's Look Closer at the Equipment You Will Need

Camera options

When photographing butterflies, the type of camera you use will significantly impact the quality of your photos.

For the best results, consider using a DSLR or mirrorless full frame camera with interchangeable lenses. These cameras typically offer better control over settings and produce great photographs.

However, if you have a macro mode or telephoto lens option on your smartphone you can achieve acceptable images of most butterflies without carrying a larger camera with you.

Ultimately, it depends on your budget and preference.

What Lens and Accessories Will You Need?

Macro Photography or telephoto lens?

For high-detail shots with 1:1 magnification, use a macro lens with a 90-150mm focal length, allowing a comfortable working distance while projecting your subject life-size onto the sensor.

For capturing intricate details, macro lenses are the ideal choice, offering flat, even focus and zero distortion - perfect for small, insect photography.

A telephoto lens (300mm or higher) allows you to capture butterflies in their natural surroundings from a distance, without disturbing them. Some will focus down to less than one metre, although they don't produce life-size results.

Accessories

Designed to fit between your camera and lens, extension tubes effectively increase the distance between the lens and the sensor allowing you to focus closer.

Extension tubes are a cost-effective alternative to purchasing a dedicated macro lens and can be used with any lens you already own.

Do be aware, however, that they can make it more difficult to focus. This is because they reduce the amount of light that reaches the camera's sensor.

Light isn't an issue on sunny days, and you might like to add a polarising filter to your kit to reduce reflections on shiny butterfly wings.

A diffuser, such as a white umbrella, can soften harsh sunlight and reduce shadows.

Tripod

Using a tripod provides stability, especially in low light or with small apertures.

For greater flexibility, especially when capturing butterflies in flight, hand-holding the camera allows for quicker adjustments.

Consider a lightweight setup to stay mobile and position yourself comfortably without disturbing your subject.

Understanding Butterfly Behaviour

Photographing butterflies can be challenging due to their rapid flight and erratic behaviour.

Yet, understanding species-specific habits boosts your chances of capturing great shots.

For example, some butterflies are more active at certain times of day or are drawn to specific flowers. By recognizing these patterns, you'll know where and when to position yourself for successful photography in their natural habitat.

But not all butterflies choose attractive flowers to feed on. The Purple Emperor, for example, prefers smelly morsels such as dog poo!

Where To Find Butterflies

Butterflies can be found in a variety of habitats.

Gardens and meadows with a diverse range of flowering plants are often hotspots for butterfly activity. By exploring these habitats and understanding the conditions that attract butterflies, you can increase your chances of finding and photographing them.

Read my quest to photograph the Swallowtail, using the link below.

The Speckled Wood butterfly, among others, prefers woodland habitats over open spaces. The Chalkhill Blue inhabits chalk and limestone downs here in the UK. One of the rarest of British butterflies, the Swallowtail, only breed where their foodstuff can be found. And those Purple Emperors? They like the tops of oak trees!

Additionally, butterfly houses and gardens can provide excellent opportunities to photograph butterflies in a controlled environment.

Camera Settings for Butterfly Photography

Once you have the equipment, and know where to find your quarry, it's time to take some stunning butterfly photos! Let’s look at how your camera settings will affect your results.

Aperture

When photographing butterflies up close, it is helpful to use a narrow aperture (higher f-stop number) to ensure the whole creature is in focus. We know this as depth of field.

A good starting point would be at least f/8-11 or higher, but you may need to adjust depending on the lighting and distance from your subject. Experiment with different settings to find what works best for you and your equipment.

If you wish to highlight a more distant butterfly from its surroundings, a wide aperture will help blur any distracting background and help the insect stand out. In this instance opening up the aperture to f/4-5.6 will work nicely.

Marbled White - an aperture of f6.3 allowed the head and legs to stand out from the rest of the butterfly

Shutter speed

To avoid blurred pictures when shooting butterflies on the wing, use a fast shutter speed of at least 1/1000th of a second, or more if you can get away with it, to freeze any sudden movements.

For close-up, stationary shots you can drop to slower shutter speeds, and open your aperture wider to still allow enough light in. Your subjects will be less active early in the morning and if you can get out in golden hour around sunrise you will be well rewarded.

Learn more about Shutter Priority Mode.

ISO

When photographing butterflies, keep your ISO setting low (such as 100 or 200) for clear images though increasing it slightly may be necessary in low-light conditions.

Modern cameras handle higher ISOs well, so don’t be afraid to go up above ISO 800 if needed.

Manual vs autofocus

For macro photography manual focus is often better, especially in situations with limited light, where auto focus may struggle.

With my Canon R5 mirrorless, manual focus mode's focus peaking feature proves particularly helpful, highlighting edges in a bright colour to let me know I have achieved sharp focus.

To keep the butterfly sharp, position your camera parallel to its body. Note that even slight wing movement can throw them out of focus at close range, as seen in the photo below where the tongue is sharp but the rear antennae could be sharper – a consequence of the mere millimeters of depth of focus, even at f16

How to Compose Your Images

Apply the rule of thirds by positioning your butterfly off-centre, using a mental tic-tac-toe grid to divide the frame into 9 squares. Place it along a line or, ideally, where lines intersect, to guide the viewer's eye to the butterfly, accentuating its delicate features and colours against the surrounding flora.

Red Admiral butterfly - f16 was enough to capture the insect in focus but blur the background

Alternatively, consider using a wider composition in some shots to include surrounding flowers or grass. This type of framing helps to show the type of environment in which the species is found.

You might need to move further back, or stay close while using a wide angle lens for this type of photograph.

silver washed fritillary from further away

Silver washed fritillary - f8 using a longer lens from further away

Control your backgrounds

Choose backgrounds that complement the butterfly’s colours.

Soft, out-of-focus backgrounds created with wide apertures can be attractive and help hide any distractions.

If you compare the two photos above, notice how the bright areas in the background of the red admiral photo distract from the subject, drawing your eye to the right.

In contrast, the silver washed fritillary photo works well with just a slight blur, as the included flowering plants provide a contextual background.

Low angles for unique perspectives

Try low angle photography to add some variety to your portfolio. Getting down to their eye-level or below provides the viewer of your images with an immersive perspective.

Be an ethical photographer

Respect the environment in which your subjects are found, by maintaining your distance and avoid disturbing the foliage upon which they rely.

Editing Your Butterfly Photos

RAW vs JPEG

Shooting in RAW allows for extensive post-processing without losing image quality.

RAW files capture all data, enabling you to adjust colors, exposure, and white balance with precision.

While they require more storage, the flexibility in editing is invaluable, especially for fine-tuning the delicate colours of butterfly wings.

How to Edit Your Butterfly Photos

After a successful session photographing butterflies it's time to post process the best of your photographs.

Start by being ruthless and deleting those that don't quite make the grade.

Delete out of focus shots first, it's not worth keeping those.

Remove missed opportunities next, those that were almost there but not quite.

Keep only those you love!

Did You Know?

In Lightroom, quickly cull unwanted photos by selecting them in the grid view and pressing X to reject. Once you've reviewed all photos from the day's session, go to Photo > Delete Rejected Photos, then choose to either Remove from Lightroom or Delete from Disk.

silver washed fritillary with blurred wings

I'd typically discard this shot due to insufficient depth of field at f/7.1, leaving the forewings' tips out of focus because of their upward curve.

When framing your main subject, it's easy to accidentally capture part of another butterfly.

If this happens, consider editing the shot to remove the intruding butterfly but its often only worth doing if the main subject is exceptional.

Once you've whittled things down to the best of the best, then start editing by correcting any slight exposure issues. Subtly enhance the vibrance rather than the saturation, to maintain natural colours.

Apply clarity to highlight textures, particularly on the eyes and antennae, but avoid over-sharpening which can create artefacts.

New to Sharpening? Visit my sharpening guide for a step-by-step walkthrough.

How about a creative twist? Select the background and convert it to black and white, leaving the butterfly in full colour (see examples below).

Antoinette Sawyer turned the background of these butterfly photos black and white.

Think about what you want to do with the photos. Will you share them on social media; print, frame, and hang them on the wall; or print them onto fabric and make into pillows, for example?

Experiment to see what works best for you and your subject.