racket-tailed emerald

[Steve Foss]

Yep, if you don't recognize the name, it must be a dragonfly, which have the most obscure and cool names in the animal kingdom. This from yesterday afternoon near a bog along the Jeanette Lake Trail up the Echo Trail. Light's a little hot, but the eyes sure have it.

Mrs. Catfish is a dragonfly nut, so I'm under orders to do a constant dragonfly search.

[Dbl]

The eyes do stand out. Taken with the 100-400?

[Headin' North]

Really nice Steve.I like the detail/color in the 'armored' body plates and the fuzz around it.What lens do you use for a close up like this?

[jonny_redhorse]

nice image Steve!......the green eyes have it!...I can hardly enter the woods without coming back with a photo of some sort of dragon or damselfly!(guess I got the "bug" )...you certainly are right on the various intriguing names of these little guys...yesterday ,I saw some more emerging species that I didn't see just last week..some juvenile white-faced meadowhawks(but never got a photo)...been seeing a ton of basket tails of various species and corporals(various types of darners also)...really tough IDing some of these guys .some of the same species have green eyes in females,blue eyes in males...I'm finding myself really scrutinizing my dragonfly field referances for some... ...any way...I really enjoy finding a new species to photograph ......in a few weeks the 12 spotted skimmers will be out on our local "pond"....the list goes on and on!...jonny

[Steve Foss]

Thanks folks. I shot it with the 100-400 at 400. Pretty sure it was at f8, and iso was 400. Some cropping, but not much, to remove distracting background stuff. I've been stopping down the zoom to f8 a lot more lately. It's a good hint that allows any lens, and especially any zoom, to operate at its sharpest. Even top prime glass sometimes is sharper stopped down one or two stops.

[Dbl]

That is the one thing I am learning with that lens. It is a tad soft for my tastes wide open. Especially when shooting moving subjects, need around f8.0 and shutter speeds around 1250 or better, which means bumping the ISO up to 400 or even 800 to get sharp images.

[Steve Foss]

The more time you spend with that combo, the smoother your technique will become. Even on cloudy days when shooting ultra-fast baseball games, I never had to bump iso past 400 to get sharp shots. I generally bump to f7.1, not to f8, which retains a bit more shutter speed.

This is not an issue unique to this lens. Most all zooms, including top glass, that span a lot of focal length share the bit of softness wide open at max focal length. And even primes can sharpen up a touch by stopping down a stop.