Four Spot Chaser Libellula quadrimaculata

[Jonathan Ashton]

Canon 50D, Canon 180mm macro lens plus Polariser, Tripod, mirror lock up, cable release, ISO100 1.3 sec f16

At last after years of waiting I found a very newly emerged Four Spot Chaser, I have been visiting this site for several years now and today as Clint might say "was my lucky day". I came across this newly emerged imago but the weather turned cold and I noticed that his pal had fallen in to the water. I stayed with this one for some hours but I have a feeling he would soon perish as his wings never got pumped up and I got the impression part of the exuvia was still stuck to his front left foreleg.

All comments welcome.

[Steve Kaluski]

Great detail in this one Jonathan and I love the angle, very nice.

Personally, I think you have masked this better than another one I have seen, where the noise is breaking through in parts.;)

TFS
Steve

[Mike Moats]

Hey Jonathan, great details, and good BG, I can't help wanting to do a 180 with my head when viewing this. This is natural but somehow my brain says to flip it over. Nice work.

[Ken Childs]

Another nice one, Jon. Good BG and great detail on the dfly. It's funny that Mike wants to do a 180 because my brain wants to do a 90 CCW. :)

[Jerry van Dijk]

I'm with Ken on the angle. Very nice image of DF behaviour.

[Michael Lloyd]

Very nice and sharp. I wish it was a little "brighter" (underexposed?) and I can't help but wonder what you would have gotten without the polarizer. I'm ok with it hanging down. If you rotate it 180 degrees then it would look like it's hanging up :)

[Bob Miller]

Hi Johnathan....great natural history image with amazing details. Could you share your techniques for sharpening post processing?

[Jonathan Ashton]

Bob probably 8 or 9 times out of 10 I use the "BPN" method i.e. after resizing to 1024px I make a mask of the subject and use USM 100/0.4/2.0 followed by two rounds of 125/0.2/0. I have an action for this and if the subject does not look right then I either add a further round or reduce a round in History.
The key thing in sharpness I feel is a steady tripod and mirror lock up - and of course a still subject. I am sure we can all get sharp images without a tripod and it is a pain carrying one around but I find when it is possible to use one then the results are always better - I suppose it forces you to slow down and consider a little more apart from being rock steady. A little adage I use when people ask is "there is nothing more still than static, so that's why I use a tripod when I can".

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Excellent details and sharpness. Lovely BG to go with !

[Julie Kenward]

Sorry, Jonathan, I couldn't get logged in for a couple of days while the server was being switched! Beautiful image - I can see why you're so thrilled to add it to your collection. I really like how well the colors of the insect, perch and BG all work together to create a visually stunning image.