Posted on June 26, 2021
We went to get a walk at the Audubon Plainsboro Preserve so I just took a camera along in case I saw some interesting Dragonflies along the walking paths. I saw quite a few Damselflies along with many Dragonflies on this visit. The Cicadas were not as noisy as previous trips with many just laying on the ground along the paths. The Featured Image is a handheld 5 image Focus Stacked image of a Female Common Whitetail Dragonfly. As I was shooting my series of images it flew off before I could photograph the Near & Far wingtips but I thought it was still interesting. If the Dragonfly is horizontal to me I usually start my handheld multi-image Focus-Stacked Images with the main body and then the Far Wing Tips and then the Near Wing tips. Lately I am also shooting with an f/stop of f/5.6 or f/8 (Depending on the lens & Teleconverter I am using and the Camera Body) to get a smoother background. I used to just shoot @ f/16 or f/22 to get the whole Dragonfly in Focus, but then I usually had a busy distracting background to deal with.


Category: Blog, Dragonflies, dragonfly, Focus Stacking, Image Stacking, Immature Dragonfly, Panorama & Stacked Images, Plainsboro Preserve, Stacked Images Tagged: common whitetail, Common Whitetail Dragonfies, common whitetail dragonfly, Female Common Whitetail Dragonfly, Immature Common Whitetail Dragonfly, Immature Common Whitetail Male Dragonfly
Posted on August 10, 2020
On our photo walk at Davidsons Mill Pond Park, I noticed this Immature Common Whitetail male dragonfly warming on a rock. It had a cluttered background behind the dragonfly, so I shot 3 images wide open, f5.6, at different focus points. 1st on the left wing, 2nd on the body, then the right wing. When I was working on the files, I loaded the 3 images in one layered Photoshop file. I selected all three layers and selected Auto-align, then auto-blend for the final merged image. When you do auto-blend Photoshop automatically blends what it thinks are the best areas to use for the final blended image. Sometimes you might need to do a tiny touch up here or there, but usually it does a pretty good job. Since I was using a tripod for these images they lined up nicely and I did not need much in the way of touch-ups on this image. I was using a 300mm f/4 with a 1.4x teleconverter. To keep the background smoother I was shooting wide open, but with a 1.4x teleconverter that would be @ f/5.6. Usually when I use a teleconverter, if there is enough light, I stop down a little more then I usually do to help with sharpness. On a 1.4x I stop down at least 1 f/stop, on a 2x teleconverter I stop down at least 2 stops (Again, if there is enough light). But on this series I wanted a smoother background so I did not stop down and left it @ f/5.6.
Category: Blog, Davidsons Mill Pond Park, Dragonflies, Favorite Locations, Focus Stacking, Uncategorized Tagged: canon 1.4x teleconverter series III, canon 300mm f/4 lens IS, Canon 7D, common whitetail, Davidsons Mill Pond Park, Image stack. image stacking, image stacking with photoshop, Immature Common Whitetail Dragonfly, Immature Common Whitetail Male Dragonfly
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