BIF +3

Oh, wonderful.

wow.
Impressive sequence, with #6 as my personal fav.

TY Peter! I, for one, adore these...
also a huge TY for answering my Q- if eye-AF will recognise a butterfly's eye?
(guess it's what you used? ;)).
a rather urgent question think about this quite a lot. ;) whenever cameras with animal-eye-AF come to mind...
because I dreamt of fluttering butterflies for years. (+ trigger traps?).
did try this, but, as you said, completely unpredictable.
never a straight line ... even hard to keep them in the frame.
(about that link- have you tried to capture wing movement as well?).

1/4000s only?
does the camera also follow speckled butterfly-eyes? not resembling bird's eyes?
(Q, Q, Q... ).

for what it's worth? love each and every one of your ratios!
the original mostly perhaps, a very close call.
hope you'll treat us to many more butterflies... a delight to watch their flight, mesmerising.

It looks the practice in following swallows pays a dividend in shooting butterflies. Amazing captures!

Thanks guys and gal.
Ine, I tried all AF eye options including all turned off and got good results with all. With this camera you can see a little green square showing the focus point when you look at the rear screen and usually you get a hit due to its insane tracking and focusing capabilities. It's then a question of f stop to get the DOF you want. As you can see from the clear skies I had plenty of light and had been shooting at 1/8000sec but as with the swallows I try to get the lowest SS without wing blur, in this case 1/4000. Yes I have tried 'arty' slow SS with birds but not butterflies [yet!] Only large slow flying birds where you can target the head and neck and get a sweeping blur from the top of the wing stroke to the bottom. It's a question of panning accuracy and helps if the bird is flying at right angles to you, I haven't got the patience to wait for the ideal conditions!
I think maybe the bird eye focus may possibly work to some extent, I went back to leaving it on as I was out 'birding 'after all. I'll try to show a shot later today where I remember the little target indicator was right on the eye, however the eye was large. Apparently the compound eye of a butterfly may have up to 17000 ommatidia receptors in each eye so Sony has a way to go yet with their focusing technology

Well done

Great set of butterflies!