from the marsh

Staying near Collingwood in the Niagara Escarpment for a few days, I was able to pull out my Olymps E-3 with 50-200SWD lens and capture a few creatures in a closeby marshy pond.

I have always marvelled at the great shots that photographers are able to produce of dragonflies. Every time I have seen them, they are flittering around withjout stopping, making me convinced that photographers must be netting them and putting them in the fridge or something - to slow down their metabolism.

And it proved to be the case in the afternoon at this pond - they were moving swiftly and there is no way I'd get a shot of them. Then later in the evening my wife alerted me to one area of the pond where a couple of dragonflies were content basking in the sun on some old stocks sticking out of the water - and thus I was able to capture these. I'm thinking that the two variations in wing color, are the male and female:

1 )


2 )


Now here is the issue with a long lens - and the one reason that I personally have never seen the need for long macro lenses. Yes a long 180 or 200mm macro will get you close while standing from a distance, however in order to capture a subject matter like these dragonflies where they are sharp from head to toe - - - is an impossibility. These 2 images show that at f5.6 at the 200mm setting, only the head is in focus and the wings go wildly out of focus. Even with shots that I took at f13 as is the case with the second one - - -the extremities are out of focus:

3 ) 200mm setting : f5.6 @ 1/1000'th - 400 ISO


4 ) 200mm setting : f13 @ 1/250th - 400 ISO

I noticed this little guy (about 3/4 inch long) in the reeds. The f5.6 aperture that I used did not do justice as it's tiny body could not be captured in full focus:

5 )


My wife hunted hard and long to find this fellow that kept us up much of the night before with his echoing croak. I was actually amazed that she was able to find him buried deep in the rushes and mud:

6 )


All shots were taken in Auto Focus mode with the sensor aimed at the heads.


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Robert Watcher said:

My wife hunted hard and long to find this fellow that kept us up much of the night before with his echoing croak. I was actually amazed that she was able to find him buried deep in the rushes and mud:

Click to expand...

This old toad is a handsome fellow with almost the right genes to be an alligator! I like the esthetics of this one as the toad melds with the algae laden water as if they are of the same substance. In fact, this picture, is so well balanced, without distracting color yelling at us, it could almost be in B&W.

Now to the dragon flies. On thing I discovered from another photographer is that dragon flies seem to travel fast but watch and you will see they are actually on a patrol and will come back and even hang out for a while on the very same stalks to just missed before they flew off the first time.

Macro requires a lot of patience and if possible a stage so one can take a series of shots as one cranks the plane of focus into the depth of the creature. Stacking software is available. Bart Van Der Wold has, I believe written about options previously for focus stacking.

Asher

So it appears that I have:

Image #1, #3, #4 - "Twelve-spotted Skimmer" male Dragonfly

Image #2 - "Common Whitetail" male Dragonfly

Image #5 - "Hagen's Bluet" Damselfly (or could be a Marsh Bluet, which is almost identical)

And yes - it appears that Image #6 is a toad and not a frog. My wife and I presumed Bullfrog - just because that is what is always thought to be the creature in a pond making its loud deep noise - - - and because of its larger size. But with some research this morning, I found that the characteristics of frogs and toads are very similar and easy to confuse - such as that both "croak". In this case, it is the warty back and stumpy body with compact muscular legs (frogs are smooth skinned and have long legs), that helped me realise it was a toad.


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I seldom do macro, although I do have a good 100mm lens. I am curious about your remark on long macro lens. Would you get more dof with a shorter lens if you moved in to frame the same area?
Some seem to like extreme magnification with only a small area in focus, but I try to get as much dof as I can. It would seem that small sensors should be the answer, but I still prefer what I have done with aps-c over those with the G9.

While I am not a closeup or macro specialist and do not profess to be skilled at nature and landscape photography - something that I see regularly in closeup and macro images, is the photographer using his/her lens at wide open apertures - - - which results in too narrow DOF that does not allow the subject to be shown at its best.

And to my eye these flaws are for the most part simply a lack of understanding of the principals of optics - - - and mostly I think, the presumption that in order to get a creamy blurred out background you must use a wide open aperture.

Now the problem is magnified by photographers who want to use long lens for closeup work, so that they can keep a healthy distance from the subject. That is understandable - except for the fact that using say a 200mm lens at closest focus is going to give even a smaller sliver of in-focus than say a 50mm or 90mm lens at the same magnification.

And so I see all kinds of "macro" images around the web, where photographers take their supposedly "macro" 75-300mm zoom lenses and take their fantastic images that are confusing with out of focus areas and many times the in-focus part of the subject is not what we want to focus on. To me - it is just not appealing and is found more often with amature photographers than pros who would make their living with such shots.

Now I'm not saying that too shallow a DOF doesn't can't have its merrits and appeal. If it is done deliberately and with a purpose with the right subject matter, it can be really nice and even suit an artistic purpose. What I was more alluding to with my comment above, is the fact that many photographers don't realize that they can and "SHOULD" close their apertures down and in many cases should make use of a shorter focal length lens for their closeup and macro images.

What will have the most influence on blurred out backgrounds with this type of subject matter, is the distance from the subject to the background. That can be seen in the images above where #4 shot closedon to f13, has the same feel as the shots taken at f5.6.

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Image #4 has been a favorite to many photographers who have responded to my thread on different forums this morning. Yes it is a good frontal view - - - but I think that I can say for certainty that much of the appeal has to do with being able to see most of the creature in pretty good focus.

What I decided to do was pull up a shot that I took earlier in the day - where I shot wide open at f5.6 in an attempt to keep shutter speeds high as I tried (unsuccessfuly) to track the flying creatures. I didn't bother changing the f stop when I shot them after landing. Once I realized that I'd be able to get some shots of the stationary dragonflies, I changed my f stop to f13 for more DOF. To be frank, I could have use much more DOF (or a shorter focal length closed down if I could have walked into the water) without destroying the mood.

I think that by showing these 2 images shot fom a very similar vantage point - - - that it is clear that much of the appeal for #4 above comes from the increased DOF, while this shot taken at f5.6 just misses the mark as a result of not enough in focus. This issue would be magnified greatly, if I were using 200mm true macro len so that I could work at even closer distances for a closer view - instead of having to be content with the closest focus that I could achieve with my zoom at 200m as was the case with these shots:





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