If you’re planning a trip to the Saanich Peninsula in British Columbia, you may want to consider including a visit to the Victoria Butterfly Gardens. Among other things, the facility has a new insect display. This article features a small selection of images captured at Insectarium with Vello Deluxe Extension Tubes for Nikon 1.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

The display area is compact but quite interesting nonetheless. All of the various insects are housed in glass display cases. If you plan on using a regular telephoto zoom lens or perhaps a macro lens and photographing some distance away from the glass surface, a polarizing filter could be helpful.

Since I was shooting hand-held in available light I did need to take a few images of the spider above before I was able to get a usable image. My single AF point was on one of the spider’s front legs in the middle of the frame. Shooting at 1/10 significantly challenged my hand-holding technique with my Nikon 1 J5.

Getting a good angle on some of the subjects was a creative exercise in itself and I did make two rounds of the display cases to see if any of the insects had moved into better shooting positions.

Some of the insects on display have incredible, natural camouflage and were quite hard to find in the display cases.

I enjoyed watching the leaf cutter ants scurrying along branches in their display case, and demonstrating their feats of strength. All in all it was good fun to spend a bit of time capturing images in this section of the Victoria Butterfly Gardens.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about the Nikon 1 system, you may want to have a look at our eBook, The Little Camera That Could. It illustrates the capability of the Nikon 1 system through hundreds of original photographs. There is also commentary and tips about the Nikon 1 system. The cost is $9.99 Canadian.

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Technical Note:
All images were captured hand-held in available light using a Nikon 1 J5 and a 1 Nikon 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 zoom lens, with Vello Deluxe Extension Tubes. All photographs in this article were produced from RAW files using my standard process of DxO OpticsPro 11, CS6 and the Nik Collection.

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Article and all images Copyright 2017 Thomas Stirr. All rights reserved. No use, duplication or adaptation of any kind is allowed without written consent. If you see this article reproduced anywhere else it is an unauthorized and illegal use. Posting comments on offending web sites and calling out individuals who steal intellectual property is always appreciated!