Summer hits London

You know when Summer's here, sunshine, warm sulty breezes and butterflies. I looked out of my window this morning and was greeted by hundreds of Painted Lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) congregating on some flowering shubs. I grabbed my Canon 40D and my 100-400 mm f4.5-5.6L IS lens and went out to capture some shots in between conference calls!

I chose the 40D rather than the 5D as it as an APS-C sensor which applies a 1.6x crop factor. These butterflies are very skitish and the effective focal length of 640mm at full zoom enabled me to get in nice and tight without causing them to flee.

By the way, I wanted to use the right collective noun for butterflies and found there were a few choices. Flight, flutter and rabble were good, but my favourite was kaleidoscope !