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Spectacular shots!!!!!OK thanks very much Alan - I don't need a lot of encouragement! ;-)View attachment 180388
Green Darner. All my in-flight shots are "full manual" - focus, exposure, aperture, and of course hand-held. I find the 300 f4 L with the Canon 5D III provides an almost ideal field of view, and the large focusing ring really helps.
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Nymphs of the Skimmer family (left) and the Darner family (right), under water. Shot with a tripod, through glass after putting them in a little aquarium , using a hand-held flash to provide lighting from the side.
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Just-emerged Meadowhawk, backlit by the full moon (no other lighting). Most dragonfly species emerge at night.
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Dew drops magnifying eye facets and some hairs.
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Male Variegated Meadowhawk - one of the most interestingly-patterned common dragonflies.
I tried dpraw when I first got the 5DIV and couldn't make any difference with it.So with my earlier images I tried to use dual pixel raw micro adjustment to sharpen focus on the eyes of my subjects. I did not find any difference to speak of in this attempt to dual pixel raw sharpen/ stack.
Have any of you tried the dual pixel raw adjustments and do they work for you?Attached image is the one I tried with but no difference as far as I can tell thus no pre and post images. Quite cropped and enlarged to 300% as seen here. Or is this even the situation that DPRAW is designed for?View attachment 180386
Great shots resulting from hard work.I find that it's possible to anticipate the right moment, following the dragonfly through the lens and slowly moving the focus ring at the same time. Then there will be a few moments when it is in focus. I don't keep the button pressed - after 5-10 continuous shots the dragonfly is often gone / way out of focus, and I find I get more keepers when I take individual shots 0.5 - 1 second apart while continuously tracking and manually adjusting focus. It also depends a lot on the individual dragonfly: even within a species, some will fly slower, hover more often, and/or fly in a more predictable pattern than others. I tend to stick with a single specimen for a long time, waiting for it to return after it passed by (they usually have pretty fixed patrol patterns). Having said that, you're right about the workload! I would say about 1 in a few 100 is a keeper - and that's before throwing out images with busy backgrounds, uninteresting lighting, wings in weird positions, etc. Yours is a lovely shot, even if it's from a slight angle. Here are a few more of mine.
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Some tails look better than others But in general, the front is more interestingI agree with you. Sometime you're not fast enough and only get the tail...
That sounds familiar, I tend to use continuous shooting while I think there is a chance the dragonfly is in focus, I adjust focus slowly back and forth around what I think is the right spot while the shutter is rolling. Exposure handled by the camera (Av mode, max open aperture) but exposure compensation might need some attention.. A 128g CF card gives plenty of room for mistakes 'Safety shift'-function always set to 'ISO' to allow the 5D3 to step down ISO if it hits the shortest possible shutter time 1/8000Then there will be a few moments when it is in focus. I don't keep the button pressed - after 5-10 continuous shots the dragonfly is often gone / way out of focus, and I find I get more keepers when I take individual shots 0.5 - 1 second apart while continuously tracking and manually adjusting focus.
Interesting technique you and Pieter have - I have used just AF.That sounds familiar, I tend to use continuous shooting while I think there is a chance the dragonfly is in focus, I adjust focus slowly back and forth around what I think is the right spot while the shutter is rolling. Exposure handled by the camera but exposure compensation might need some attention.. A 128g CF card gives plenty of room for mistakes
I like the Migrant Hawker, I have seen it hover 10 seconds, less than a meter away from me. Of course I had no camera at that occasion
10mm back focus on this one, how could it happen?
F36A2429_DxO_full by Erik Astrom, on Flickr
That sounds familiar, I tend to use continuous shooting while I think there is a chance the dragonfly is in focus, I adjust focus slowly back and forth around what I think is the right spot while the shutter is rolling. Exposure handled by the camera (Av mode, max open aperture) but exposure compensation might need some attention.. A 128g CF card gives plenty of room for mistakes 'Safety shift'-function always set to 'ISO' to allow the 5D3 to step down ISO if it hits the shortest possible shutter time 1/8000
I like the Migrant Hawker, I have seen it hover 10 seconds, less than a meter away from me. Of course I had no camera at that occasion
10mm back focus on this one, how could it happen?
by Erik Astrom, on Flickr
You have a point there EF100-400 with 1.4x TC starts at f/8 so I'm there most of the time.. usually the background is lit very differently from the dragonflies, and changes while you're panning, and then exposures tend to be off. Usually the dragonflies themselves are pretty uniformly lit (as you shoot them always at about the same distance and roughly in the same direction)...
Here's to next year. It's been my first season for dragonflies and damselflies and so I am looking forward to next summer!The season is almost over here..
A photo from the archive: