Dragonfly Naiad

[BillTyler]

The tadpoles and small fish were disappearing from my friend's small pool. When she investigated more closely, she found this dragonfly naiad. Dragonflies spend most of their lives as naiads, living underwater, hunting other aquatic life. This naiad is sitting in shallow water in a petri dish.

Canon 5D mk ii
Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens. Magnification not recorded.
Handheld
1/200 f/16 ISO 1000
Three Canon speedlights arranged in a rough triangle pointing in at the naiad, on manual flash settings, one each front left and front right, and a third right rear.
Processed in Lightroom for minor exposure adjustment and highlight reduction.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Bill. A nice tight MP-E closeup with good exposure and good sharpness within your DOF. I do find all the flash-generated spectral highlights rather distracting though. You could clone a lot of these - if you wanted to spend the time. The other, better, option is to diffuse the flashes the next time you try this. I'm wondering why you chose an ISO of 1,000 (for my aquatic photos with 2 flashes, I usually use an ISO in the 100-200 range which still gives me plenty of light and less digital noise). Some selective nr on the OOF portions of your image would help to smooth out those areas. Photographing aquatic invertebrates is fascinating and something not many photographers are into - I hope to see more of your aquatic work here in the future! :S3:

[BillTyler]

...The other, better, option is to diffuse the flashes the next time you try this. I'm wondering why you chose an ISO of 1,000 (for my aquatic photos with 2 flashes, I usually use an ISO in the 100-200 range which still gives me plenty of light and less digital noise). Some selective nr on the OOF portions of your image would help to smooth out those areas. Photographing aquatic invertebrates is fascinating and something not many photographers are into...

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I should have been diffusing the flashes, but found myself without anything to do the diffusion with, due to a rather hectic weekend. Even a piece of printer paper would have helped.

Bill

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nicely detailed shot, I agree about the highlights.
Naiad is not a term I had come across before in relation to insects, I note it is also associated with Greek mythology - water nymph.