Variable Darner

[Dave Leroy]

At least that is what I think it is. Taken the other day when we had some nice warm sun and these fellows were out hunting.

It was a first for me and a lot of fun. Good practice get things lined up in the "scope".

50D, 500mm plus 1.4TE, 1/2000, f/5.6, ISO800, TP and Wimberly.
I cropped a bit from left and bottom.

I went back the next day which was cool and dark and nothing was around.



Dave

[Rene Quenneville]

great catch. the are quite fast. f/5.6 seems a little shallow dof which increases the difficulty.

[Ken Childs]

Hey Dave, this looks great! I know just how hard it is to capture a Dragon in flight. More DOF would have been nice but I know from experience that you need the fast SS so it seems like a fair trade-off. The foliage on the left and bottom really helps to frame the bug. The gray area in the URC is a little distracting so I would clone or paint it so it matches the rest of the blue BG and there are a couple of bright areas on the abdomen that might look better if they were toned down. Overall this is very well done! :cheers:

[Dave Leroy]

Thanks Rene and Ken,

More dof would have been real nice, but this was a first time for me so I thought I had better keep the ss as high as I could. I had been in Av mode, but depending on the bg the ss would sometimes drop a bit. So I switched to manual and set ss at 1/2000.

Ken I also was not happy with the gray area URC, but I kept mucking it up when i tried taking it out. I will give it another go.

Tks,

Dave

[Ken Childs]

Ken I also was not happy with the gray area URC, but I kept mucking it up when i tried taking it out. I will give it another go.
In Photoshop I would select the abdomen, reverse the selection, use the eyedropper to select some of the nearby sky color and using a soft brush at a low opacity, paint over the gray area.

[subhrashis]

Amazing colors on the dragon! I am trying to imagine how it must have been like following flying dragons around with a 1120mm effective FL setup! All counted, an awesome image!!!


Removing the gray URC would definitely improve this one. It would also be nice to see other wing positions if you have them. Thanks for sharing!!!

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Dave. Very nice job getting a difficult shot. Good sharpness head to tail and the included vegetation is a plus. Ken has some good suggestions to tweak the image and take it up a notch. The comp works well as presented, but you might also consider a tighter crop by taking some off the left and bottom. Well done.

[Dave Leroy]

Thanks for the additional comments.

I did try Ken's suggestion to remove the dark corner, and it certainly made things a lot easier. I need a bit more practice to get it seamless.

Dave

[Leon Robinson Jr.]

I LOVE this! This is something I dream of taking and have not had success. I think the more DOF would have been difficult to maintain the sharpness.