Butterflies du Jour and a New Camera

Great Spangled Fritillary

I bought a new camera the other day because I believe my well abused and beloved Kodak Z915 is dying.  I wanted a small point and shoot type with a lot of zoom (gotta bring those eagles in) that's not so expensive I'm unwilling to carry it in the field or fishing. Given the enormous variety of cameras available merely making a choice is difficult.

Eastern Tailed Blue

First, the butterfly above is a Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele).  We've seen it before.

The one on the right is new and, I think, the Eastern Tailed Blue (Everes comyntas), that I once tentatively confused with the Gray Hairstreak.  As small as the Gray Hairstreak is (about the size of my thumbnail) this butterfly is much smaller, barely the size the nail of my pinky finger.

I settled on the Panasonic Lumix ZS15, which I purchased from Amazon, via the link on the right side of my page (Hint, hint).  It has 16 power optical zoom and an additional 2x "digital" zoom.  I took all the pictures in this post with it today.






Some pictures to exhibit the power and clarity of the zoom on the Lumix.  This picture was taken out of the back door of my office, using no zoom.


This picture was taken from the same point with zoom on the full 16 X optical zoom.




Finally, the tops of the trees with the optical plus the digital zoom for 32 X  (yes, I should have done the truck again, so sue me).

Pictures have been resized and touched with a little sharpening - resizing causes a slight loss in sharpness. Click on the pictures to enlarge.



I'm really looking forward to trying this on the eagles...