Photography, the flight of the dragon fly

[Andre]

The other day I posted this in the France thread:

...

And now, today I made the pic finally, which I had in mind when I bought this camera, a flying dragonfly. One of the most challenging ever.

I have seen more flying dragon flies and certainly in better quality, but I never have seen anything like this before:

See what I mean?

I sent the pic to an entomology institute, asking about this behavior and got a quick reply. It is asserted that dragon flies avoid desorientation with keeping the head horizontal during steep manoeuvres. Actually this tilt is from an unstable hover, jumping left and right. This jump can be seen in the last two of this short series that I shot with 8 frames per second. So it took the dragonfly some 0,125 sec to reposition.

1:

2:

3: now we see a slight tilt of the body to the left, head remaining horizontal:

4: and the jump

The first shot is promoted to my best dragonfly shot. Here is a 100% size crop:

 

[sourlemon]

Andre, the picture looks awesome! I can't believe you were able to capture it so well. I really like the second picture. I'm still having trouble trying to capture things in motion :(

Great job!

 

[Andre]

Thanks, actually, some years ago, I saw a picture like these and seeing the erratic hover flight of the dragon flies, I realized how difficult this shot must be. So thinking about that, the target is set, eventually that picture simply had to be made someday.

Apart from ones own agility and reaction speed, it also requires a camera that's up to that work and mine didn't (Canon EOS 550D), so as said, this picture was the main driver to upgrade to the super fast 7D with a very sophisticated focussing system (lens used EF 70-300mm IS USM - hand held). The is rest is hours of patience and a bit of luck.

Well you'd need to justify sometimes why you need to spend the money on such an expensive gadget, while any simple cell phone can do the trick.

 

[Borek]

Nice work

Retractable gear?

 

[Andre]

Thanks, yes, a very remarkable retractable gear behind the eyes.

 

[QuarkCharmer]

Wow, I never knew that they did that. It reminds me of that thing that chickens do with their head, where their body can be all over the place but their head remains calm and level. Anyone who has ever picked up a chicken knows what I'm talking about. Amazing photograph!