Lenses

All the major manufacturers produce a vast range of lenses suitable for every conceivable situation, including a wide choice of macro lenses of various focal lengths. Always check compatibility between lenses and camera bodies by using the charts shown on the camera manufacturer websites. Beware that camera functions may not work if you fit an incompatible lens.

There are 3 basic types of lens available - primes, zooms and macros. Don't be misled into thinking that the so-called "macro" facility of zoom lenses will give you results as good as a real macro lens, it won't. The results however are quite acceptable to many people, and it's well worthwhile having a general purpose zoom with a close-up facility.

Euphydryas aurinia, 18-70mm zoom set at 70mm and closest focus © Adrian Hoskins

Zoom lenses

Standard kit lenses, typically 18-70mm zooms, offer a reasonable working distance and focus close enough to fill the picture with a medium sized butterfly. Most manufacturers also offer longer zooms such as 18-125mm or even 18-250mm. These versatile optics will cover a huge range of subjects - butterflies, birds, sports, portraits, landscapes etc; and can be left permanently fixed to the camera, preventing the ingress of dust, which can get onto the image sensor and ruin photos.

One major disadvantage of zoom lenses is that they usually have a small maximum aperture. This reduces viewfinder brightness making it harder to compose photos in poor lighting conditions. Zoom lenses never focus as closely as true macro lenses, so while they are fine for larger butterflies, they will not let you get close enough to photograph blues, coppers or skippers. Zooms also suffer from optical defects such as colour fringing, and their large front elements make them prone to flare.

Many people find it difficult to approach nervous butterflies, and prefer to use long zoom lenses or prime telephotos that enable them to shoot from further away. There are disadvantages however. Firstly the lenses are long and heavy which makes them hard to hold steady. Another disadvantage is that the greater distance between camera and butterfly severely limits your choice of viewpoint.

Macro-lenses

If you are really serious about butterfly photography, particularly if you want to photograph larvae, pupae, anatomical details etc, you will need a proper macro lens, i.e. one that will focus continually from infinity down to life-size without needing to fiddle with switches, or to add close up lenses.

Essex Skipper Thymelicus lineola © Adrian Hoskins

The major manufacturers produce a range of macro lenses to cater for all needs. The light and easy to use lenses in the 60-70mm range are fine for the more approachable species, but butterflies are often quite nervous, so ideally you need something longer. Most users therefore feel happier using something in the 90-105mm range.

The best lenses feature internal focussing, which keeps the length of the lens constant regardless of focus distance and makes focussing much faster. These lenses have virtually silent focus motors.

Some of the more expensive lenses also feature image stabilisation which helps to reduce blurred images caused by camera-shake. At macro distances their effectiveness is limited but they will still let you use a slightly slower shutter speed assuming of course that the subject is stationary. Beware that image stabilisation only corrects for camera shake, it does not correct for subject movement!

To get this close you need a macro lens that provides a magnification ratio of 1:1 © Adrian Hoskins

If you are considering buying one of the longer 150mm or 180mm macro lenses, beware that these are a lot heavier, much more difficult to hold steady, and slower to focus than shorter lenses. There are times when they can be useful to photograph a distant butterfly, but for most of the time if you approach your subject carefully you should have no difficulty getting close with a 105mm macro.