Have you ever seen a dragon fly?

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twebster
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Have you ever seen a dragon fly?

Post by twebster »

Hi y'all, :D

(Sorry, Rik. I just couldn't help making a play on one of your topic titles. :D )

Image

Image

Image

I was out at the Gilbert Water Ranch this morning trying to get some wading bird images. It had rained a little bit, yesterday, and this morning was hot, muggy, and had a heavy overcast. I made these images of the hovering dragonfly while waiting for the birds to do something interesting. These were all shot with the Canon EOS 20D and Canon EF 300mm f 2.8L IS lens with the Canon EF 2x II teleconverter attached. The overcast was so heavy I had to use ISO 800 to get a fast enough shutter speed just to stop the body movement. I was shooting at 1/250 sec @ f 11.

The autofocus did not work well. It appears that the fluttering wings throw off the autofocus and the camera wouldn't even try to autofocus. All of these shots were manually focused. They're a bit "grainy" because of the high ISO and little fuzzy because these are approximately 30% crops from full frame. It was hard to manually focus, too, because I was only seeing the darker, shady side of the dragonfly against the cloudy sky. In good light from the proper angle I should be able to make some very detailed flying dragonfly images :!: :D

Best regards to all as always, :D
Tom Webster
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Re: Have you ever seen a dragon fly?

Post by rjlittlefield »

twebster wrote:Sorry, Rik. I just couldn't help making a play on one of your topic titles. :D
Not a problem. I vaguely recollect that I was playing off the crows in Disney's Dumbo movie...just so you know where this material really comes from. :lol:

These pics are promising. That first one nicely shows off the quarter-cycle phase shift between front and rear wings. (It's got a real nice background, too :wink: )

Hhmm...but wait... You said "hovering". Hovering dragonflies are reputed to use counterstroking -- half-cycle phase shift. (See earlier topic started by Erland.) I wonder what's going on?

--Rik
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twebster
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Post by twebster »

Hi ya' Rik, :D

I really don't know about "phase shifts" and "stroke". Hovering is the only way I could have gotten these images. It is just too darned hard to follow a moving dragonfly with, and manually focus, what is basically a 600mm f 5.6 lens. I tried a few times. These buggers just move too darned fast :!: :shock: :D

Best regards, my friend. :D
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Beetleman
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Post by Beetleman »

I am definitely waiting on more of these photos Tom, they are super :shock:
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Post by rjlittlefield »

twebster wrote:Hovering is the only way I could have gotten these images. It is just too darned hard to follow a moving dragonfly with, and manually focus, what is basically a 600mm f 5.6 lens. I tried a few times. These buggers just move too darned fast :!: :shock: :D
Don't I know it! One of my wonderful childhood moments was of flyfishing on the lake, when all of a sudden it seemed that my line had gotten tangled in a tree or something. But wait -- I was in a boat a hundred yards from shore -- what's going on?! Then I looked up. It seems that a large blue darner had grabbed my fishing fly in mid-cast and was now hovering over my head, holding up the fly, the leader, and several feet of line, whilst trying to figure out how to eat the dang thing. After a few seconds it got frustrated, let go, and took off to go find some more tender prey.

What I'm really wondering about is how true it is that dragonflies counterstroke while hovering.

That's what the literature says, but of course these experiments & observations are not easy to do, so in the end "the literature" may be based on one or two guys watching a handful of dragonflies.

Could well be that the world is more complicated -- that sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't, and you just happened to shoot ones that weren't.

Wasn't there some famous baseball player who said, "You can see a lot by just looking."? The more this technology lets us look, the more I imagine we'll see.

Perhaps Erland will tune in at some point and give us his thoughts.

--Rik
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Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

Well, I don't know about counter strokes, counter terrorism or backstrokes but I do know that these are some great photographs Tom! :D However I do flyfish quite a bit and have never had even a trout mistake my flies for the real thing but they bite anyway so as not to hurt my feelings. :lol:
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S. Alden
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Post by S. Alden »

Wonderful images Tom and ones that are not that easy to get.
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Wim van Egmond
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Post by Wim van Egmond »

Hello Tom,

They are magnificent. Especially the first one!

best regards,

Wim

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