Stopped by the local dragonfly pond a couple of days ago and found a few to play with. (Just a few – they seem to get scarcer every year.) I did focus stacks with the R5 and electronic shutter – so much smoother than the manual ones I had tried in past years. It took quite a few tries to get one with no twitching.
Specific Feedback Requested
All comments welcome!
Technical Details
Canon R5, 100-500 + 2X at 686, f/11, 1/320, ISO 800. Full frame with slight crop from the right. Minimal shadows/highlights in LR, stack of 17 in Zerene, DMap. Very minimal retouching needed. Zerene handled well the slight movement of the reed in the breeze.
4 Likes
You’re really working your macro lens 
! Interesting shadow and reflection on the perch. Although the near BG is a little busy, I actually find that encourages me to look more closely at the different parts of the skimmer where they cross the business. Beautiful colours too!
Technically a very good focus stacking revealing a lot of details. I like the composition with the vertical lines as well as the color scheme.
Colors and details present are nice. There appears to be no stacking artifacts and the focus is sharp throughout the image. I wish that the dragonfly was posed differently so that more of the head was visible. But that is for other trips and other opportunities may pop up. I do like how the light that passed through the wings was captuyred on the perch. Well done…Jim
Beautiful shot! Love the sharpness of the dragonfly as well as that of the texture of the reed, including the orange-tinged shadows of the wings! Perfect exposure with great colours. If anything, I’m slightly distracted by the small bokeh above the tip of the top left wing. Did you do focus stacking in camera as well as in post?
Diane, I love the colors of this guy, and how nature just compliments the colors with the greens and the oranges. I really am impressed with the colors of the DF showing up on the reed he is perched on. Like @Jim_Zablotny I would have preferred his face showing more, but then I would not be enjoying the “shadow colors” on the reed most likely. Besides, these guys perch where they will and we have to use the position that they give us. Very nice image as is. I’m looking forward to trying the in camera focus stacking if and when the R7 ever arrives. They are really behind in filling the preorders.
Thanks, everyone! @LauraEmerson, I debated about that little specular highlight but decided to leave it there for authenticity. If it hadn’t had the pleasant roundness of good bokeh, I would have removed it. (I think most lenses of the last few years now have enough aperture blades to render pleasingly round bokeh.)
I use the camera’s wonderful focus bracketing feature, but would never process anything in-camera. I use Zerene Stacker’s DMap algorithm and almost always need to do some retouching in PS.
@Diane_Miller Yes, that is true, the bokeh is quite round for f/11. I’ve never done stacking, as most of my images involve fast moving waves and yachts but I shall try focus stacking in post for some of my land shots some day. Zerene seems really good from what I saw.
@LauraEmerson, there is also another stacking program, Helicon Focus, that is worth a look. Zerene was developed for scientific macro work and is very capable. I don’t know how Helicon compares in that regard but I suspect at the level most of us would use it, they are probably equal. Helicon has the additional capability of controlling the camera’s steps, but that requires a tethered laptop and is largely negated with the in-camera stacking we have now if you don’t mind stacking a little beyond what you will need and deleting the extra frames.
hi @Diane_Miller Thanks very much for the info, much appreciated! I use the Sony A7R4 which churns out 60MP RAW files and does not have in-camera focus stacking, likely because the processing would just be too enormous. In any event, it sounds to me like in-camera FS is a bit of a gadget and that the best results are achieved in post using either of these 2 programs that you mention. I am a new full-frame user and haven’t got around to stacking yet. Indeed, need to go around with both a FF and a compact at all times. Kind of hate my FF sometimes for all the additional trouble it causes 
Hi Diane, this angle of view shows off those beautiful wings very nicely as well as the striking colors of the abdomen. Nice job on the focus stack. A pleasing image.
