Peacock

I'm no expert on butterfly identification - my limit is usually the cabbage white. Am sure someone will confirm my belief that this is a Peacock (Inachis io).
Its a fairly common one right across the British Isles.

I photographed it not for its rarity (common as muck as my grandma would have said) but to learn more about my new camera. I don't consider my skills on wildlife macro to be anything beyond mediocre, so I wanted to look at the focussing on subjects like this, the 5D3 AF system (which seems quite complex and initially confusing) and balance between ISO, DoF and noise to get a half decent in focus butterfly.

The bush is the same Buddleia bush as last Sunday's shot but much more light and less wind today.

Have applied a little sharpening in LR along with some tweaks on exposure to increase contrast and reduce the flowers a little which were slightly over-exposed. Have also cropped the image to remove a highlight off a leaf on the rhs.

I think I'm pleased with this. I did some shots at 1600 ISO and there was noticably more noise. Quite some practice needed yet but I hope someone likes it.