Photographing Butterflies with a 30 Year Old Lens

I photographed this grey hairstreak (Strymon melinus) with my Canon 7D and an adapted Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 lens over the past weekend. I used a diffused 580 EX Speedlite to provide fill light.

As expected for a 30+ year old lens, the focus is manual; but this is not an issue for macro work as autofocus is often useless for very small subjects. The other major issue with this lens is the manual aperture; this means I had to stop down the lens before focusing. This resulted in a darker viewfinder while I was focusing which was not too great an problem given a sufficient level of ambient light. Overall, I was very pleased with the sharpness of this lens; this 100% crop gives an idea of the sharpness:

I have been considering buying a focus confirmation chip for this lens – this would aid in focusing with the stopped down aperture – but that’s just a thought at the moment. For now I will continue enjoying this little gem of a lens – any thoughts or experience with this lens?

One last image – this American snout (Libytheana carinenta) was too neat to leave out.

• American Snout
• grey hairstreak
• Libytheana carinenta
• Micro-Nikkor
• Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5
• Strymon melinus