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Bill: I was using my Canon Powershot SX50 HS. Commonly referred to as a bridge camera, the camera has a fixed lens. It's billed as a 50x zoom (24mm - 1200mm)
I saw the subject on the top of the bird feeder, grabbed my camera went outside and shot a number of shots from 10 to 15ft. and noticed as I kept getting closer that it could care less about my presence so, I set the camera to macro mode with a focal length of 15.86mm. I was less than a foot away when I took these shots, some were no further than 6" away.
On Tuesday I caught this Tule Bluet couple in 'Tandem.' After males and females have mated, the male stays attached to the female, as she oviposits in the stems of bulrushes. They are in their tandem position.
I watched these two doing the tandem behavior for over 40 minutes before they took off to where ever. Flying back and forth in a small area of bulrush for the entire time, they would spend the majority of the time on the stems depositing the eggs.
very impressive, especially for a fixed-lens camera! the bokeh isn't great, due to the small sensor, but the clarity and sharpness are amazing! great job catching these guys in flight - i haven't managed that in a couple of years!
very impressive, especially for a fixed-lens camera! the bokeh isn't great, due to the small sensor, but the clarity and sharpness are amazing! great job catching these guys in flight - i haven't managed that in a couple of years!
Thank you for the input, Rocky. This was actually the affect that I was going for in these particular shots today. There's different types of bokeh, which type are you thinking about?
I tell ya, I was shooting just above the dragonflies, standing on a bridge and have shots from today with them in-flight with sharper background. I really didn't care for the busy pond with all the muck and algae and the harsh light reflection so I focused with a more foliage background, I was getting a focused background with the foliage when I decided that I wanted some nice in-flight pictures with nearly all the attention focused on the dragonfly. I almost set it to macro which can make the background blur but decided that I was rather happy with the settings I had going so, I achieved a more blury background by aiming at the dragonfly in the center and kinda doing a minimal twist motion left or right to come up with the blury background.
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