Common Blue in shade+repost

Hi all
I've been concentrating on butterflies recently and thought I would share one that I was pleased with last night. I've been wanting a picture of a Common Blue for ages and the ones that I find roosting are normally less than perfect; with bits missing out of their wing or faded colours.
I found this near perfect blue and spent around an hour trying different poses and lighting.
I particuarly liked this image of it. The butterfly was in shade but part of the background was still in sunlight giving this strange surreal feel to the image.
It was still quite breezy when I took this image hence the larger aperture. I would have loved for it to have been calm to get all of the stem in focus.
Comments and crits welcome!

Canon 1D MKIV
Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro
1/125sec at f/6.3
ISO 400
Handheld
(I really dislike this lens when on a tripod as it is so fiddly and takes ages to setup a shot due to not having the tripod collar. Does anybody else use one and how do they use it?)

Know nothing a bout the lens but this looks fine to me !
JohnR

that's a beauty Ian, I really like the background colours. You've mentioned the only very minor nit.

Matt

lovely shot and I love the colour in the background

Lovely bunch of colours, high impact image shows off the butterfly really well.

Tim

Works for me Ian, i love the colours.

Cheers
Mark.G

Looks OK to me Ian but I do find the BG a little too saturated, even though this may have been the colours straight out of the camera. As advanced as they are, the cameras can still get it wrong when the lights a bit tricky. DOF doesn't bother me too much.

Des

Hi Ian

Very nice image - I know what you mean re tripods for butterflies they really are a pain and I always use one with my 180mm macro. However I recently purchased the Canon 100mm f2.8L macro IS USM for use without a tripod and I love it - you can see a short review on my website.

David

Nicely detailed shot but I have to agree that the colours do look very saturated and almost garish..

Brett

Nice close-up Ian but have to agree with others about the saturation.

Thanks all for the comments. I do agree about the saturation. In processing I put around +5 on saturation and vibrance each just to punch the colours but I think the conversion to web has saturated them even more. I've reprocessed it. Is this better?

I do prefer the second one. Feel a bit more natural

That's a lot more natural looking Ian and a better image for it in my opinion.

Brett

Yeah, I have to agree. I uploaded the first image three times because of the saturation. I must increase my knowledge of save to web! Thanks again for the comments.

That's lovely Ian and the second is far easier on the eye. If I was going to be picky I think I might have preferred it without the yellow at all as I feel that the wings rather merge into it. But it's still a beauty as far as I am concerned.
eric

The second works much better for me too. The first shot background overpowered the foreground subject for me personally.

Ian