Dragonfly
Blue on Green: ISO 200, 87mm, f/4.0, 1/1600
This was taken at Elizabeth Hall Wetlands in Lethbridge, Alberta. A blue eyed dragon fly resting in the marsh.
Wind was blowing pretty good the day I took this. Hard to get a sharp photo.
16/08/10 Filed in: Summer
On Top Dragonfly: ISO 125, 6.2mm, f/2.8, 1/250
Dragonfly and Rose Leaves: ISO 125, 6.2mm, F/2.8, 1/500
Up Close Dragonfly: ISO 80, 6.2mm, f/2.8, 1/1250
Angela and I were preparing our supper on the Barbeque when I noticed this dragonfly flying around our one rosebush. Angela just happenned to have her Point and Shoot Compact camera outside because she was taking pictures of our cats.
I set her camera to macro mode and played around. If I had gone inside the house to grab my camera I probably would have lost track of this little guy.
Point and Shoots are great for macro photography. The small sensors capture the details nicely. For me the drawbacks are the camera chooses the settings and only shoots JPEGs.
Angela's camera does allow manual settings but by the time you change everything the shot is gone. When you set Angela's camera to Macro mode it fixes the Aperture to f/2.8 and the camera's processor figures out everything else.
When I shoot with my DSLR my cameras are set up to shoot in RAW instead of JPEG. RAW means that the camera has done very little processing work. When I import the RAW image to my computer it allows me to do the processing work as I would like to see it. If I do that too much to a JPEG you will notice image quality will decrease.
The very top shot you can see camera noise in the dragonfly's body and the rose leaves. I adjusted the exposure to bring out the details in the dragonfly as he was pretty dark in the original shot. With RAW I could have brought out more detail and colour without so much noise. However, if I used my camera I might not have gotten any of these shots at all.
To me Photography is all about catching the moment. You can only catch these moments with the camera you have with you.