Neon Skimmer dragonfly

I was able to get a series of shots of this Neon Skimmer dragonfly that perched on the antenna on my wife's Camaro. The incredibly short depth of field of all the shots prompted me to spend a good bit of time playing with Curtis' Excel workbook learning more about DOF - a great learning experience! The only "processing" done on the shots were to crop them a bit and save them in a low-enough quality to upload to the forum.

The one of the critter's back was shot with my 100-300 at 300mm, f/5.6 and it came as a complete surprise that one end of the wings could be in focus while the other end was slightly out, due to DOF. The trees in the background made a nice smudge. I found particularly interesting the connective tissues holding his head to his thorax.

The one of his front was with my 28-105 at 105mm, f/5.6 aperture. I was really pleased with the bokeh on this one; the trees are at a different across-the-street house.

Comments welcome!

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

You can acquire a set of magnifying lenses +1+2+4, etc. from Bower that really help with these types of photographs. The hardest part is getting them to stand still, but once you do, it is then a challenge to get close enough. The magnifier lenses (which are cheap) help a lot. To get a Dragonfly to sit still long enough for this requires a lot of stealth and patience. Nicely done.