Dragonfly in Flight

Evening. Some shots from today, a Migrant Hawker, being quite obliging. All on the 150-450 again. ISO 400, f10, 1/200th sec

All done as these are very very tricky to capture in flight

Thanks Kevriano for the tips, had a little success earlier today, unfortunately the blighter wouldn't face me. only got the one bite thou in 3 hours !!

Excellent. Glad I helped, but your not allowed to do better than me

Seriously though, very nice. I got some more today, of a different species.

LOL, I only got 3 shots before he moved off, a female appeared about an hour later and spent 10 mins inspecting shady areas and eventually settled on a crevice and promptly laid her eggs behind a load of leaf and moss cover,.

I shall persevere 😊

Ahh they are very good at hiding when you are trying to photograph them. Really not cricket is it 😁

What a fab set!

I've no idea how you could possibly get these in focus! Its a special skill thats for sure ..... I also think the movement of the wings is excellent, so the shutter speed is really well judged. Impressive indeed!

Thank you, it's very much appreciated. It has taken a good few shots to hone the technique, but I do now have a setting that seems to work well. I have seen many shots with the wings frozen in motion, which just looks a bit odd. Anything below 1/800th seems to be ok though.

agreed

Mine was shot with a Sigma 100 - 300 F4 @ 300mm and F10 with a 1/640th second exposure, ISO 3200, they do dart around a bit and earlier in the morning before it gets toooooo hot is better as once it gets to 24 deg ish and above, they are even more twitchy.

Thanks Chris ....I'll have to give it a try sometime ....after which I'll be able to show you all my collection of beautiful soft bokeh backgrounds !!

Excellent set, and very useful tips, if I ever see one

I posted in another thread about settings, when Chris asked, but for those interested, all of my in flight shots are handheld (or occasionally with a monopod in lower light) and I use single centre point focus and AFC mode for focus. I will adjust the f-stop accordingly to keep the shutter speed below 1/1000th, which will keep the wings nicely blurred. The rest is practice. Not easy to get some species, never still (Brown Hawkers grrrrr), but Migrant Hawker, Southern Hawkers and Norfolk are reasonably good targets, as they do hover in one spot, or close to it at least.
All of the comments have been much appreciated. Thank you all.

Very well done in getting these southern hawkers doing what they do best! As for brown hawkers my approach is forget af, prefocus on a point it may appear and just spray and pray..... They are very unpredictable hawkers and my hit rate is poor plus they are very time consuming...