To achieve a soft focus on the background, I needed to use a very wide lens aperture which in this case was f3.5. My shutter speed was 1/30 of a second which required a very still subject and camera to prevent blurring. I didn't have a tripod, so holding the camera close to my face and "locking" my arms into my chest was necessary to keep the camera steady. In order to quickly focus on the butterfly, I switched to manual focus mode so I wouldn't need to use the "lock focus and reframe" technique. For a shot like this I find good old manual focus to be easier.