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All 3 are reasonably heavy crops so I lost some quality as a result but I was reasonably happy with these (just 3 out of 50 or so shots mind, so not a particularly good "keeper" ratio!).
I had to shoot hand-held as it's not practical to use a tripod in the butterfly house although both lenses used in these shots have IS which obviously helped. All the shots I took with my non-IS 60mm macro came out blurred through camera shake, poor (manual) focusing or a combination of both .
My preference is to use the 70-300mm lens to give a reasonable working distance and I'm just about to buy a set of extension tubes to reduce the minimum focus distance rather than use the close-up lens - hopefully this will up the quality a little and allow me to fill the frame.
Tropical Wings is a great place to practice your insect photography and, as it's indoors, there's no wind to make things difficult! There's a few other attractions at the park including small mammals and birds of prey plus there's plenty of stuff for kids to do. If you live in, or near, Essex give it a look. It gets busy at weekends and half terms though (when we went!).
These are lovely shots of the butterflies Stuart. Its not my normal type of photography, but from where I'm sitting they look pretty spot on . I was interested to see what your camera settings were, but can't find any exif data on the gallery. However you mention about the low proportion of keepers, possibly due to camera shake and therefore was wondering what the Shutter speed was and indeed the ISO. Also wondered if a monopod would have helped instead of the tripod.
As an aside, I had to do a job on Thursday, mainly people shots, and the lighting was appalling. They expect miracles but I gave them the impossible instead It meant increasing to ISO1600 and working on the extreme boundaries of what was possible in order to get the keepers. The point I'm making, if there is one, is that maybe to get the shots you need to compromise some camera settings
These are lovely shots of the butterflies Stuart. Its not my normal type of photography, but from where I'm sitting they look pretty spot on . I was interested to see what your camera settings were, but can't find any exif data on the gallery. However you mention about the low proportion of keepers, possibly due to camera shake and therefore was wondering what the Shutter speed was and indeed the ISO. Also wondered if a monopod would have helped instead of the tripod.
As an aside, I had to do a job on Thursday, mainly people shots, and the lighting was appalling. They expect miracles but I gave them the impossible instead It meant increasing to ISO1600 and working on the extreme boundaries of what was possible in order to get the keepers. The point I'm making, if there is one, is that maybe to get the shots you need to compromise some camera settings
The settings were:
1/100 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
1/200 sec, f8, ISO 400
1/320 sec, f5.6, ISO 800
so the light wasn't that bad and the last shot shows that ISO 800 is quite acceptable on the 350D I guess? (Although I may have used NeatImage on this one to quell the noise a bit - can't remember). Can't quite work out why the 60mm macro shots were all so poor in comparison - I'll have to look at the EXIF.
I've taken people shots at ISO 1600 (by mistake ) and been surprised by the results. Here's one which is also a fair crop of the original frame - perfectly usable I thought, although have you ever seen so many garish colours in one shot?
I was very impressed with the crisp sharpness & depth of field. I always find it difficult taking pics of butterflies, especially in the garden....when they rarely visit, as they never seem to sit still long enough to focus on them!
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but I gave them the impossible instead 
) and been surprised by the results. Here's one which is also a fair crop of the original frame - perfectly usable I thought, although have you ever seen so many garish colours in one shot? 
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