Green dragon

I went back to the grove yesterday after blipping, to explore my exposure problems. The faster exposure helped, but did not solve the glare problems. So for today, I built a temporary clip on glare shield out of black card. It made no difference what so ever. Ironically, all the hand held shots were perfect.

I guess most of you have figured out the problem now, I am just embarrassed that it took me this long, but I have never used the eye piece shutter before, as the only time I have done tripod shots is when the light was really low. I have documented the issue in the hope of preventing someone else from making the same mistake. Light entering the eye piece affects things significantly.

Back to today's efforts. Obviously all the tripod shots were shot. This green dragon landed about five feet away. I picked up my camera and started shooting and moving in closer. I was quite amazed that it let me get so close. I could not risk another step, so I extended my arms for the final few shots, so that I could still see through the view finder and focus.

I had eleven good shots and it took me an hour in the lab to choose the blip photo. This shot won because it showed the most of the wing structure. The camera was set-up for tripod shots of hovering bees, it turns out that I had more time than I thought and I could have reduced the aperture some, but I was very happy with the depth of field that I got from the shots. DOF is always the big problem when shooting such large insects.

I read on the internet a few days ago, that dragons are not so good with sustained flight and are prone to overheating. They have to land and cool down. This is obviously what happened with this subject, allowing me to get within a foot or so. Previously I have never managed to get within six feet of the green dragon. I had lots of photos but none worth blipping. So this fact is worth remembering.

Well that's the green dragon put to bed. Back to the bee shots tomorrow, with the eye piece shutter CLOSED.

Update - Orthetrum sabina sabina -as close as I can establish.

Dave