Dragonflies - added a few varieties for the road

Thanks Lucy. The camera made it easy. Had to whisper in their ears to keep them still !

Last question - yes, it was 100% mechanical. Because of that it was real real simple and made a mechanical sound when adjusting. Unlike the silence of a digital camera.
You can see the shutter speeds at top of the dial, the f-stops at the lower section of the dial. As you rotated the dial the shutter speed synchronized with its appropriate f-stop for the given photo.(note the lens is a wicked fine Carl Zeiss) Note also this is a 'slow' camera, it is limited to f3.8 and a 1/500 shutter speed. Note also the simplicity, this old camera will take National Geographic
level shots without 100 other digital settings. It has everything it needs to take great shots in good light within the limits of a 75mm focal length(general purpose) lens. This simple camera taught me to be able to tame a complicated digital camera. It is no different than a digital, it just does not have all those confusing OPTIONS, grrr.




50mm is the lens focal length(I believe it would be 50mm to focus to the film plate or the digital sensor plate). You can find the focal length of a common single lens magnifying glass by simply pulling it away from the subject, at the point it just starts to go out of focus that will be the distance of the focal length for that particular lens. It is simple.

The 50mm is the focal length of that particular lense. The easy part - know that a 15mm to 35mm FL(macro) lens is good for macro. A 50mm FL is good for portraits and wider angle landscape shots. 100mm FL begins telephoto range and is very low power telescope. A 500mm(telephoto) has about the same magnification power as binoculars. A 1000mm FL(telephoto) is similar to a low power pay spotting scope like you would find in a National park. A 2000mm FL is really a telescope, it can see the rings on saturn.
A 1000mm telephoto is always a physically long lens 15 to 50mm lens is short.
The minimum focus distance to subject is short(inches) for a 15 to 35mm lens, and probably 10 feet away for a 1000mm lens.
A 1000mm lens has a very narrow field of view, so it needs a lot of light(f1.4, f2.8, f3.6 in most conditions)
A 15mm lens has a wide field(wide angle) of view and grabs a lot of light.(however the camera has to be so close to the subject that the camera often blocks the light to the subject ! Making macro shots tricky) Also the closer the camera gets to the subject the more easy it is to shake the camera and mess up the focus meaning a tripod is needed. This makes macro shots trickier to focus and get good light. So, I get dragonfly shots by using 500mm telephoto instead of a 15mm macro, this allows the camera to be 3 feet from the dragonfly and eliminates the need for the tripod because the camera is a whole 3 feet from the bug.

Hope that helps Ed,.

PS, it may behoove you to buy a 1950's model fully mechanical vintage camera from a junk shop just to see how it works. As soon as I put ANY camera in my hand my brain automatically reverts to the image of the old Rolleicord to remind me of shutter speed/f-stop(aperture) relationship.

The Japanese copied the Rolleicord/Rolleiflex twin lens reflex. Mamiya made it but with a 105mm focal length. Same rotary dial shutter speed/f-stop selector design. It maxes out at f32 aperture and an long 8 second shutter speed. See shutter speeds 8-1-1/2-1/4-1/8-1/15 etc

Interesting !

Had no idea that the mm rating
broke down that way
To the focal length
Really good explanation

Just a silly speculating question

What do you think Galileo telescope focal length was?
don’t thin those wops used millimeter math
or maybe they did?
divine geomancer

Other varieties. The blue one is the dominator. They rule the area.
Maybe someone knows why they stick there southbound end straight up in the air. Impaling parachuters ?








These guys are super shy, about 8 feet away

Man James

Sure you’ve seen that program
w/Sir David Attenborough

using amazing photographic tricks
to tease out nature’s marvels

They have nothing on you!

These were taken with the wife's expensive DSLR camera mohs. It has a 200mm lens compared to a 500mm on the Lumix so the photos had to be cropped over twice as much. If they were cropped more then the photo quality would suffer more so than the 500mm would(less crop).

If the Lumix was set at 200mm the photo quality would probably be less in color reproduction and vividness. Maybe. The Lumix performs competitively though, impressive camera for the money. Plus it weighs about 1/4 of the wife's monster. The autofocus is far superior on wife's camera.

In auto mode the Nikon picked about f6 at a 1/600 shutter and ISO 200. Not bad. If wanting to improve I would switch to Aperture priority to:
f13 at a 1/200 shutter speed and ISO 100 or 200. The only benefit would be a wider focus depth so that the entire dragonfly was in focus.

Nikon DSLR color is unbeatable:




The dragons are about maxed out, note distortion in closer up photo(1st photo). This was the best closer in photo by far. Difference between 200mm and 500mm



These are as good as it could perform from many shots taken.(I gave it my best). The Lumix does these easy thanks to 500mm.





Note lack of sharpness due to heavy crop. This was the norm with 200mm.




With a good Nikon 500mm the outcome would have likely been dead sharp photos.
I did spend 2 hours trying to figure out shooting in Nikon's aperture mode, kept running into wrestling with setting complications. Found out the ISO and white balance had to be manually set, then figure out how to change the aperture(instead of leaving the settings to 'AUTO' selected settings). Next time I will be able to shoot her camera in the more manual 'aperture mode'. Time well spent. And I had many years experience shooting with a Nikon DSLR(Nikon D90) years ago and the barrage of settings still were challenging to figure out. Let it be known that her newer D7100 was very similar to the older Nikon D90. A Canon DSLR(or any other brand) would have forced me to learn their settings, a big task. Best to pick a particular brand and stay with it since the settings would be repetitive.

My guess, and this is truly a guess, is that they're probably releasing pheromones to attract females or to mark territory.

That was the first time I captured a mud dauber Ed. Black with blue iridescence. They are hyper quick and don't sit still for photos !
They are a big nuisance because of all the available mud on the farm always plastering their mud nests on the most undesirable locations.
They eat spiders by the 100's and have never stung me anyway.

Great builders

Thanks much for the ID rob7789. There are so many varieties to sort thru to ID them. It makes sense they are obelisking this year since it has been real hot. I had a career in wetland mitigation and always noticed dragonfly larvae could survive in the most polluted of waters - note Blue dasher. Thanks again, I wanted to know their ID. There are quite a few other variations on site, just can't get photos due to their shyness.(I'll keep trying !)

Widow skimmer



Blue dasher(very common, larvae stage resilient to polluted water)



Eastern amberwing(mimics a wasp for protection from predators)



Slaty skimmer