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Bit excited by this one. I managed to grab half an hour this evening to go back to the site where I found the harvester ants. I was hoping to capture maybe a wasp/ant confrontation, but I was a little late for the wasps I think. Most had gone to bed. The ants were still about of course and I discovered a different species which I haven't ID'd yet, but I'll post them as soon as I have sorted out the good ones. Anyway, as the light was fading (and it was beginning to rain) this lovely little damselfly showed up. I think it will be a female, but I'm not sure on the species yet (I bet Robin will be able to tell me when he sees this). Anyway, she wasn't up for a close up. I think she was preparing for bed, and had I more time I probably could have waited until she had settled, but as I was the "wrong side" of the river it was time to head off.
I swapped in my 55-250 EF-S and I was quickly reminded of it's limitations (I have the first model I think, not the mark III which Nick uses). auto-focus was next to useless. Yes I know it was low light but this was ridiculous. Anyway I switched to manual. Now maybe I am far too used to using macro lenses now (I only ever shoot macro now it seems) but I was really surprised how far back I had to be to focus. I couldn't get close to filling my crop sensor with this reasonably large insect, so this is a bit of a crop. I thought I could put an extension tube on, but the clock was ticking,and I would lose even more light that way. In the end I had to up the ISO (1600 oh no!) and shoot wide open (F5.6 with this lens) which isn't it's sharpest. Thinking about it now I'm not sure if I would have been better of not using it on it's maximum zoom, but I automatically went into wildlife mode and went for the clean background. Maybe I'll experiment more when I get more time.
Anyway, enough whining. This is what I came back with, and I'm fairly happy with it. At least I know there are damsels about now and I'll go back again to see if I can find more at some point. This is my first ever damselfly and I am at leat one step closer to my goal of getting a close up portrait stack of a damsel fly this year
Green Damselfly by Tim.Garlick, on Flickr
Flickr seems to have done it's sharpening trick on this again....
I swapped in my 55-250 EF-S and I was quickly reminded of it's limitations (I have the first model I think, not the mark III which Nick uses). auto-focus was next to useless. Yes I know it was low light but this was ridiculous. Anyway I switched to manual. Now maybe I am far too used to using macro lenses now (I only ever shoot macro now it seems) but I was really surprised how far back I had to be to focus. I couldn't get close to filling my crop sensor with this reasonably large insect, so this is a bit of a crop. I thought I could put an extension tube on, but the clock was ticking,and I would lose even more light that way. In the end I had to up the ISO (1600 oh no!) and shoot wide open (F5.6 with this lens) which isn't it's sharpest. Thinking about it now I'm not sure if I would have been better of not using it on it's maximum zoom, but I automatically went into wildlife mode and went for the clean background. Maybe I'll experiment more when I get more time.
Anyway, enough whining. This is what I came back with, and I'm fairly happy with it. At least I know there are damsels about now and I'll go back again to see if I can find more at some point. This is my first ever damselfly and I am at leat one step closer to my goal of getting a close up portrait stack of a damsel fly this year
Green Damselfly by Tim.Garlick, on Flickr
Flickr seems to have done it's sharpening trick on this again....