![](\"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/common_darter_dragonfly_2909087119.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFirst of all the equipment: I used the Canon 40D with the 100-400mm long lens at full zoom, so a 400mm focal length. ISO was set to 640 to help keep the shutter speed high, and I used aperture priority set to f\/8, which (with the ISO) gave a shutter speed of 1\/1600s. The camera was hand held (ie no tripod or support). <\/p>\n
The difficult bit was to get the flying dragonfly in focus. That's tricky enough when they are over the flat surface of the water, but this one was staying over the much more complicated background of grass, soil and stones. The camera was set to 'AI' focusing with a single (central) focusing point. This means that the camera automatically refocuses on the target as it moves (so long as you keep the focusing point over the subject). Great for birds in flight, but for something this small and quick it can create a problem because as soon as the dragonfly moves off-centre the camera will refocus on the background. I got plenty of nice red blurs hovering over sharp white stones. Chasing it around clearly (or, more precisely, totally unclearly) wasn't going to work.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, darters are creatures of precise habits. They will land again and again on the same spot. After watching for a while I could more or less predict its movements, so I focused on it when it had landed and waited. And I locked the focus. On the 40D this is easy. I have it set up so that I use one of the buttons on the rear of the camera to control focus, leaving the shutter button (which usually deals with focusing and<\/i> firing) free to deal only with releasing the shutter. This two button system of focusing and firing really helps as it avoids the risk of accidentally refocusing when you finally take the shot. So, with the dragonfly nicely in focus I re-framed the shot (i.e. I moved the camera so that I could just make out the edge of the dragonfly in the corner of the frame), and waited. It took two or three attempts to get the timing right, but finally I managed to click as it took off. Presto! A dragonfly, in flight, over rough terrain, and in focus.<\/p>\n
The finished shot is a moderate crop of the full frame. The background has been softened with Neat Image, and I've added a touch of sharpening to bring out the detail. I also brightened it a little in Photoshop Elements.<\/p>\n
Camera note: taken with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[1148,40],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dragonfly","tag-dragonfly","tag-photography","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}