Articles

1.Photographing dragonflies in flight.

2.City night photography

Article 1. Photographing Dragonflies in Flight

Equipment:
Auto Focus                                                                        Manual Focus
Fast focusing Camera                                                         Manually focusing camera                      
300mm (or more) fast lens (F2.8-F/4)                                300mm (or more) lens
Tripod/Monopod/Handheld                                                Tripod

Optional for both setups
Flash
20mm Extension tube

It also helps if your camera has a short shutter lag and can do a few frames per second

Knowledge:
Know your dragonfly, know its season, know its habitat, know its flight pattern (jizz), watch it.
In the UK the best dragonfly to learn with is the Migrant Hawker (above photo), its flight pattern has frequent periods of hover which last for long enough that with practice you can photograph. Migrant Hawker’s are around from late July through to November, found at sunny unpolluted lakes and ponds.

Shooting Technique:
So once you have located a good candidate, a good spot, and it’s a bright sunny day (helps enormously) you can begin. To start with all you should try and achieve is getting the dragonfly in your field of view. Get yourself comfortable, maybe a chair, camera supported on tripod or monopod.
TIP: A zoom can make this easier as you can spot the dragonfly in wide and then zoom in and take your shot.
TIP: Is to pre focus on an object that is about the same distance away as your dragonfly, enabling fast focusing.

Next step is to get your dragonfly sharp, high shutter speeds and a steady setup can help this a lot. Manual focusing is a technique that like learning to type will be slow at the beginning but can reap great benefits once learnt. I personally often use both auto and manual, I aid focusing with manual getting the insect in near focus and then use auto focus to finish the job.  

Once you have mastered a few, this may well takes many many shots and lots of patience you can start thinking of how you would like your picture, sharp wings/blurred wings, is it better with fill flash, how much depth of field and so forth.  

Sometimes your dragonfly comes closer than the minimal focal distance of your lens, this is when you would need to use an extension tube. Extension tubes enable closer focus, without losing light, and incidentally are a very cheap way to convert a lens into a macro lens.

The dragonfly shot above has all the body in focus this great depth of field was achieved with the help of flash, as you close down the aperture you lose light, to keep the insect sharp you don’t want to lose too much shutter speed, so you can add more light using a flash. Using flash is a balancing act, too much and the subject doesn’t look real, so you adjust the flash output using it’s compensation to give what you feel is the most natural look.

Photographing dragonflies in flight can be a lovely way to spend a sunny day, have fun it’s very addictive.

Article 2. City Night Shots

Equipment:
Camera with tripod socket.
Cable release/camera with timer
Tripod
Strong Tripod head that can support your camera with lens in landscape and portrait modes.
Stop watch
Colleague/s, you can feel vulnerable at night so it’s nice to be out with a like minded friend/s so you feel safe and can relax and concentrate on photography.

Optional
Flash

Technique:
Find your spot, setup up your tripod and camera, attach your cable release or setup your camera to go on timer. Compose your photograph. Most camera’s will meter for exposure up to 30seconds, above this time some trial and error will be needed to get your exposure correct, (histogram within its frame).
Tip: Set your camera if possible to shutter priority so you can keep the time below 30seconds allowing your camera to meter, long exposures are nice in that you can get effects of blurred clouds, smooth water, interesting smoke trails, light trails from cars/planes.
If your photograph is underexposed then you will need to use your stop watch and set your camera to Bulb, attach cable release and open the shutter, I suggest you increase by 15 seconds, so this time expose for 45seconds, do this until your histogram peaks in the middle of its frame.
Tip: If you want star bursts from lights you need to close your aperture to F/16 and above. Lenses with more blades in their diaphragm  produce more rays.

A problem you may encounter is overexposed lighted areas, if these are large and unsightly then I suggest you take more than one exposure, one holding the detail in the bright areas and blend in a photo editing program.

Its refreshing to see your city at night, very rewarding and exciting photography.

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