Common Darters

[Jonathan Ashton]

Canon 7D Canon 100-400L @365mm handheld ISO 400 1/800 f8

I went to the local botanical gardens -hadn't been for years, had some fun chasing these darters and I didn't fall in - unusual for me! I used the zoom because I hadn't used it for ages - just fancied a change, as it turned out it was very useful. All comments welcome.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Flight shot of mating (or about to) DFs - wow - this is awesome !
Liked that slight motion blur in the wings.

[Ken Childs]

Looks good Jon! It's not perfectly sharp but it's better than anything I've been able to get of flying/mating Sympetrums. :)
If you haven't already done so, some selective sharpening on their bodies might help.

Were these hovering? The Sympetrum sp. we have here hover quite a bit when mating.

[Art Kornienko]

Tough enought shot to get Jon, I guess my only comment would have been for a smoother uniform bg and better sharpness/dof on the right Darter.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Ken they hovered as they were ovipositing but I couldn't get a shot of them there because the background was not suitable.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Jonathan, breaking the usual patterns sometimes gives you great results like this shot! I would have gone for a smaller aperture to increase DOF on the butterflies, but this probably would have gotten you motion blur and an even busier background. I see some noise around both dragonfly heads and on the wing blurs, which can easily be solved. Nice work on a though shot.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Jonathan,Degree of difficulty is huge.....but I don't think you nailed the focus:( Bg looks like a pond IMO....so while smoother may have been better.....I would have been OK with it. Push that 7D.....ISO 640 (at least) to push the SS or DOF......these are tough so any bit of help you can get is a bonus! If you nailed the focus....this would be off the charts for me!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks for your comments - I did a bit of monkeying around the eyes because there were very large burnt out catchlights.

[Don Lacy]

hi Jonathan, Really cool image I thought the Darters could be saved with another round of sharpening and another round of selective sharpening on the heads i also tone4 the BG down a little to help separate it from the Darters.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks for taking time to do the rework Don, I will go back to the RAW file and have another go.