Bring those darks/blacks in. Looks to lack a little contrast.

Nice Common Blue Damselfly, with a decent dof at this angle, though I believe the focus is just behind the eyes, on the antehumeral stripe.

Carl

Hi Woody, the beercan is a great lens isn't it! Thats a really good shot, i love the way you have managed to capture the angle of the dragonfly in relation to the grass, composition on this one is really well achieved. I agree with the previous poster that you need to bring out the blacks a little but apart from that it's excellent. One thing I will say is that pics of dragonflies really require a fast, sharp lens to get the insect in correct focus, but you have done surprisingly well with the beercan! A quick question, how long did it stay on that bit of grass for? I'm guessing not long!

Hi Leon,

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate the feedback- like I say I don't do this style/type of photography often. I agree with you about the Beercan (it's a true legend and an asset to the A mount!) I just love the lens, it's all good and it's built like the proverbial...

I read Carl's comment earlier before work, but didn't get a chance to reply. Yes I suppose it could do with denser blacks (I'll post an alternative version in a bit), and it did actually have quite strong blacks in it- I backed off in PP. One thing that I have spotted on the A300 (and I'm not sure why) is blacks that clip and posterize quite early. It may be the tone curve on the images (although that shouldn't effect RAW too badly) or it could be the RAW convertor, at the moment all my images are converted to DNGs as Aperture doesn't yet have native RAW support for the A300 :-(

Lastly, I actually stayed around for a little while- I lost track of time. Why'd you ask?

Anyway, thanks for the comments.

Andrew

Hi Andrew,
It was in relation to the dragonfly, from past experience they don't hang around too long! Have you tried lightroom beta for raw processing?

The following image is the update after reading Carl and Leon's comments on it. It's funny, the original looked good in isolation and printed great but after seeing this version, it looks kind of insipid.

What do you think, is this better?

Andrew

Hi Leon,

I haven't tried the latest version of Lightroom, but did try the original Beta version. I did like it, but after trying Aperture I made the switch. It's quite frustrating having to 'work around' the issue at the moment, but I guess it's because the camera is new and I'm not 100% familiar with it-yet. The 5D is obviously different (I've spent the best part of 2 and a bit years with it).

Andrew

The darks are so important with these species. Takes ages to work out best combination of aperture and angle - I'm still learning. This year, got very little of any quality.

Similar shot to yours, last year, KM5D and Tamron 70-300mm

Same species, Enallagma cyathigerum (Common Blue Damselfly), but with a near side on angle. Any more acute, and one end or the other would have been out of focus.

Carl got the point here, you need contrast and the level of the black has to be on a right level. I've been thinking also the sharpness, or perhaps the lackness of the sharpness in the first photo. Carl's photo is a lot sharper and I think that sharpness is most critical issue usually, especially with the insects and bugs, you can't add that easily with PP, colors, contrast etc you easily change. It looks to me, that in the first photo, the sharpest area is somewhere near the leaf, hard to say from a small pic.

And yes to me this version looks nicer too, though I like the first also.

The way you've composed this I like it a lot and to me is one of the better dragonfly shots I've seen. I'm kind of squeamish of insect photos usually, but really like this.