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Dragonflies
in flight (December 05, 2006)
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| Canon EOS
350D, Canon EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM, Canon 1.4x TC, 1/1250
f/7.1, iso 400, tripod. Torrile, Italy. |
Even though I consider Torrile "a
place for bird photography", sometimes there are other
interesting subjects. This summer, there where hundreds of colorful
dragonflies, few meters from the hide. It was very easy to
photograph them on a stick or a leaf, but I was more interested to
capture them in fligh, during mating, to capture a photos that is
interesting both for the action and for the behavioral aspect.
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| Ring-type
USM motor |
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The most difficult thing was to
find the subject (with a focal length of 840mm, the angle of
view is very narrow) and to focus, since they were
continuosly moving. In this situation, the ring-type USM
autofocus motor of the 600 f/4 has helped me a lot, thanks
to its fast operation and, even more important, thanks to
full time manual focus.
The "so and so" autofocus of the 350D was good
enough to follow the subject, but it was not able to catch
the subject in first place...and of course if you don't have
the subject you can't even follow it. So I decided to use
the AF lock button (star button) and FTM: while I kept
pressed the focus lock, I turned the large AF ring to focus
manually on the subject. When the subject was reasonaly in
focus, I released the AF lock, to follow the subject with
the autofocus (in AI Servo mode). The great advantage of
full time manual focus is that you can focus manually even
if the lens is set to AF, and you can switch between AF and
MF in every moment. When the camera is not able to recognize
the subject by itself (here, the subject was moving quickly
so the AF would have focussed on background), you can
"help" the AF by focussing manually on the
subject, then you can come back to autofocus to track the
subject. |
Even with these techs, it was not easy
to capture this photo. Many times I got just two out of focus blobs
of colors, while in other images the dragonflies are sharp but they
are turned away from the camera. I toke many photos in continuos
shooting mode; usually, after catching the subject, the AF was able
to follow it for 5-6 shots. I stopped down a little (7.1) to get a
bit more depth of field, since this is a pretty small subject and
there was enough light to have a fast shutter speed even at f/7.1.
The focal length ensured a clean, out of focus background, that
complements the subject. The lens was
mounted on Gitzo 1548 tripod with Wimberley Head II - this is the
perfect support for the 600 f/4; I always use it when I am in a
hide. The tripod gives a little less freedom of movements than
handholding, but anyway in the hides there is not much room for
movement, and the Wimberley head is fantastic - it allows to follow
without any effort the action, the lens is perfecly balanced and it
feels weightless.
Do you have
comments or questions?
If you have comments or questions about this
article, feel free to ask in the Juza
Nature Photography Discussion Forum!
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