common blue damsel flies life cycle shot

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I am new to dragonfly/damselfly photography. I have access to a mountain pond and decided to give it a try. Taken with Z8 and Z100-400. I took about 1500 shots and salvaged 40. Problems were many: DOF, SS, blown out whites, high ISO. Suggestions from more experience photogs will be appreciated.

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Image Description

Hundreds of damsel and dragon flies over a shallow pond full of tadpoles. Mating activity was common. Shot late afternoon with sun at my back but still too bright at 5PM. Sunset here is about 9:30PM. I was standing on a bridge between two ponds/hand held.

Technical Details

Z8, 100-400 at 400mm. SS 1/2500, ISO 9000


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You caught a great moment here! Sadly, the light was not very kind to you, even at 5 pm.
You didn’t mention your F-stop, but you needed a little more DOF to render that back 'fly sharp.
I messed around a little with this nice catch, and came up with this.

  1. cropped looser, with 'flies more toward the right to balance the image
  2. darkened all the bright areas
  3. tried some selective sharpening to that back dragonfly (didn’t help much)
    Perhaps an improvement?

I like what you did. I had already darkened the bright areas. What did you use?

Dan, I just circled the areas and reduced the brightness. A little tedious, but worked, I think…

You don’t give a clue to what might have caused the strange double image of the perch. The stability of a tripod is the best thing you can do at high magnifications – coupled with good IS. Softer light is the second best thing.

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Catching them at this stage is such a luck of the draw so congratulations on that aspect. Every year I do a ton of Odonata photography, mostly from the kayak and here’s what I’ve learned -

Most species of damsel and dragonfly are territorial and many return to the same perches, so pick one of those and wait. If you do that, you might not need such a fast shutter speed and won’t push the ISO so high, but things can vary so use what captures the action best.

The shiny exoskeletons of these guys will blow out highlights and I find that the intense color of the Bluet species like the one here can also blow out. If you use Zebra stripes or something similar in camera to show you that you’ve clipped the highlights, this will help.

In post processing, using a flat or linear profile can also help by eliminating the automatic curve added to the Raw file by the camera and by RAW editors like Adobe Lightroom. Learn about and download a Linear Profile for your camera here -

If at all possible, get as much of the insect aligned with the focal plane as you can. Most importantly, the eyes have to be crisp. For this shot, getting the bodies lined up together is critical. For this shot, you mostly got it, but her body isn’t lined up with his perfectly so you needed to shift a little to achieve that.

I never use a tripod because these guys move too fast and so using all stabilization in lens and camera is so important. I’d die without it!!

Last, but not least, get close. I mean really close. Details are so fine in these animals that it gets lost if you have to crop a lot.

You can do this by going out on slightly cooler days with less sun or by leaving it for early mornings and later afternoons. Odonata species need to be warm to fly and when just getting started in the day they are slower and less flitty because they are cold. If you do have to shoot in full sun, use a polarizer to cut glare and wait for clouds to settle in if they are around and moving quickly.

Phew. I did go on a bit, but I hope it was helpful! Keep at it. They are such fun subjects and make for some excellent close ups.

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Diane, thanks. I will head back to the pond with tripod an hour or so later in the afternoon. The perch aberration was due to using the remove tool in PS on some exoskeleton material that I thought was a distraction.

Thank you, Kristen. Your thorough advice is much appreciated. Getting close will be difficult. I had to shoot from a wooden bridge and did not have a way to get less than 10 ft away from the perch. I do have a polarizer and will take it along. The pond is a bit of a trek so I did not take a tripod. I will try it with and without. I will download the linear profile repository. Getting exact alignment will be difficult. More DOF?

Sounds like a good place to practice, even with the hike. Most of the ones I shoot are about 10 ft away, too, but I’m usually using 1000mm with a full frame (Canon R5 with 100-500 + 2X). Sounds similar to your rig. For someone my size, after about 5 minutes it’s a brick, hence the tripod. At my usual pond I can move around but the bank is steep and I can rarely get as close as I’d like. The tripod can be a blessing one minute and a nuisance the next. A monopod is a compromise – never blessing enough but less of a nuisance. Sitting on the bank using a kneepod technique can sometimes work.

Getting close vs cropping is another quandary. With your full-frame high-res sensor you can crop a lot. The closer you are the less DOF you have, and going to something like f/18 limits ISO/SS a lot for very little gain in DOF.

One advantage of a tripod is that if the subject is still (and close enough to see well) I can focus bracket – even 3 shots will cover it. There is rarely time to set that up in camera so I just change focus on the fly with the focus ring. That’s too awkward when I’m handholding, but having custom function to quickly switch to in-camera bracketing could be a good idea.

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Kris - what a great and thorough explanation - much appreciated by ALL of us!
Absolutely agree about the tripod - useless, imo, for a great many shots. I drag one all over the world, and very rarely use it. In Costa Rica, only with the multi-flash set up on 2 days. In Africa - never. I can’t move fast enough unless I’m hand-holding.

S

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Daniel, I would feel guilty trying to give you advice on this shot since I have yet had the opportunity to point my camera at damselflies in this action setting. However, you have obtained some excellent advice here from @Kris_Smith and @Diane_Miller. I too don’t use my tripod all that much. You never know what nature is going to throw at you, and there are times when a tripod is a necessity to get the shot you hope for, and other times, nature is moving fast and no time to fiddle with the tripod. Lighting make a decision for the tripod as well. If you can take it with you, it is a good thing to have in case. I use the monopod more than the tripod, but HH more than anything else. Each one of us has to find what works best in the different situations. Sounds like a nice place to go take shots.

Thanks Shirley. I am away from the pond location for a week but when I return home will try later in the day and more DOF. It is not easy for me to get focus using the tripod on these small, fast moving subjects. Thx for your perspective.

Further thoughts for those who find tripods a hindrance – a lot comes down to the head. I am a total klutz with a ballhead and any kind of heavy camera/lens, especially a telephoto with a tripod foot. A ball head can flop sideways too easily. There is so much more control with a gimbal, and there are several heads that give a similar effect by tightening an adjustment after leveling that then limits movement to horizontal and vertical. The FlexShooter is one, much smaller and lighter than a true gimbal.

The few times I use a tripod, it’s with the Jobu gimbal head I bought from Dennis a few years ago. That replaced the WH-200 which was ridiculously big and heavy, but needed for the old Nikon D850+500mm lens. The Sony stuff is SO much lighter and pleasant to use.

Daniel: I’ll just be lazy and ditto Kris. With so many frames you clearly must have been shooting in burst mode. Can you imagine trying to do this in the film era? I used to fill trash cans with rejected slides. I have used a tripod on dragonflies but only after I had some hand helds in the bank and only if it was coming back to the same perch. My Living Dangerously shots were taken from a tripod which allowed me a lot more precision but she was a very cooperative subject. Also, as you well know hand holding long lenses is difficult and there is so much less margin for error with camera movement, another great improvement in image stabilization that makes it even possible to consider such shots. All in all a pretty darn good effort on your part and hope you keep after it. >=))>