Couple of nice damselfly's

[neuroanatomist]

Great shots!  Love the eletric blue of the top one...

I have yet to get good shots of damselflies, but here's one I like of their dragonfly relatives.

"Look Out Below!"


EOS 7D, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400mm, 1/640 s, f/5.6, ISO 100

Great shot.
Is it handhold or on tripod with remote shutter release?


And, if handhold; did you sharpen the photo?

Thanks!  Shot from a tripod with remote shutter.

[Kernuak]

Caught these dragonflies in the act several years ago.  I was up to my armpits in a creek at the bottom of a ravine in rural Greece:



This was with a C/Y mount Zeiss adapted to my 10D & set to the minimum focus distance.  I can't remember if it was the 28mm f/2.8 Distagon (my walkaround lens at the time) or the 50mm f/1.4 Planar, but I remember being very close (less than 30cm/1ft).

The plane of focus just misses the head of the green one but I nailed the golden one.  In retrospect I probably should crop this a bit more...

I haven't had many opportunities to photograph demoiselles, plenty of the various blues, but neither the beautiful or banded demoiselle. I think I've only had the one opportunity and that was a female banded demoiselle in very harsh lighting. It's always difficult to get sufficient DoF when they're in a mating wheel (or attempting it in your case), as they're usually in a position where it is difficult to get the plane right, particularly as they are active enough to move off if you get too close or disturb them too much. Because the demoiselles are larger than most other damselflies, there is probably an even bigger difference in distance between the two heads.

[sootzzs]

One more. Taken with EF-S 55-250 and edited in GIMP 2.8 and Lightroom 4.1 desaturate.

[cayenne]

One more. Taken with EF-S 55-250 and edited in GIMP 2.8 and Lightroom 4.1 desaturate.

I was going to try to play a bit with GIMP, but first time I imported in, it said it was downconverting my image....can't remember the exact message, but I was shocked that GIMP seemingly couldn't handle my image at high resolution.

You're pic looks great..wondering if you found a way to bypass this downgrade GIMP seems to want to do at times...or if not.
What did you import into GIMP with as far as format, 64/32 bit....etc....

Thanks in advance,

cayenne

[sootzzs]

Thank You! It is one of my favorites, especially taken with such a simple lens.

Unfortunately I'm not an expert on GIMP (or Photoshop in that matter). I know what you are talking about because it happened to me also while I have opened the Tiff from Lightroom in GIMP (don't remember the exat message). I think GIMP (in my case at least) just couldn't read the 16bit  encoded image and converted it to 8 bit. I didn't seen any noticeable downgrade in image quality though and after I've finished to edit it I just exported it as JPEG. I use 32bit Windows7, but not sure this limitation comes from that or from some other reason.

But again, I am far from understand anything on this issue and would appreciate if some one more knowledgeable could share his insights with both of us.   

One more. Taken with EF-S 55-250 and edited in GIMP 2.8 and Lightroom 4.1 desaturate.

I was going to try to play a bit with GIMP, but first time I imported in, it said it was downconverting my image....can't remember the exact message, but I was shocked that GIMP seemingly couldn't handle my image at high resolution.

You're pic looks great..wondering if you found a way to bypass this downgrade GIMP seems to want to do at times...or if not.
What did you import into GIMP with as far as format, 64/32 bit....etc....

Thanks in advance,

cayenne

[akiskev]

Whenever I use my S5 (rarely), I get impressed from the results.



For comparison reasons here is a shot with my 30d + Zeiss 80-200 f/4 (I LOVE THIS LENS) :