Reading mode: Light Dark

Birth of a Damselfly (long post)

Go to last post
C

cjed

Senior Member
Messages
2,039
Reaction score
5
Location
Wiltshire, UK
This morning I was down at a local lake looking for emerging Damselflies. These beautiful insects are smaller cousins to the more well known Draginfiles. They spend most of their life in an aquatic larval form, called nymphs, like this one :-



At around this time of year, they climb out of the water onto some vegetation around or in the lake, and shed their final larval skin to be come Damselflies, like this one :-



Today I was lucky enough to witness a number doing this and got a few of the sequence down on 'film' (well, my 300D's CompactFlash card anyway). The total time from leaving the water to sheding the larval skin (the discarded skin is called an exuvia) is about 15 - 20 minutes, another 20-30 minutes is required to pump up the wings an harden them so that it can take it's maiden flight.

The next four shots show stages in the emergence, ending with the neonatal Damselfly waiting for it's wings to inflate and dry :-









There are lots more shots in the sequence from two 'hatchings', along with other neonatal Damselfly shots in these two of my PBase galleries :-

http://www.pbase.com/cjed/neonatal
http://www.pbase.com/cjed/emerge1

All these were taken with the 300D, Canon 100mm f2.8 USM Macro lens and MT-24EX flash, handheld, manual focus. ISO 100 1/200th @ f16. Post processing consists of cropping (except where indicated in the galleries), contrast adjustment, slight saturation, resizing for web and final sharpening.

Any comments, critisism, suggestions for improvement gladly accepted :-)

--
You want macros? We got 'em! Check out:
http://www.pbase.com/cjed
 
Are you using any extension tubes? I'm unable to get the up close bug thing or flower thing and don't quite understand what I might be doing wrong. My lens is the same as yours. Any help greatly appreciated.
--
Pamela
Perspective is Everything

Persistence and Determination Alone are Omnipotent.
 
This is a fabulous photo story, thanks for sharing
--

Taking a photo narrows the photographers eye to the essence but widens the viewers sight and mind.
 
pghaworth said:
Are you using any extension tubes? I'm unable to get the up close
bug thing or flower thing and don't quite understand what I might
be doing wrong. My lens is the same as yours. Any help greatly
appreciated.
Click to expand...
Hi Pamela, no, these shots were without extension tubes, although I do occasionally use them with my 100mm Macro lens when shooting the really small bugs.

If you have the 100mm f2.8 Macro lens there should be no problem in getting close enough (apart from the subjects getting nervous and running away!). When focused down to 1:1 your picture will be of an area approx 22.7 x 15.1 mm (about 1" x 0.75"). As these Damselflies are between 20 and 40mm in length theres no problem about filling the photo with them.

Try the following, set the lens to manual focus (I never use AF when doing Macro work), then turn it so the focus distance window shows 1:1 magnification (1 in yellow digits, 1.02 in green and 0.31 in white). Now, take the camera and looking through the viewfinder, slowly approach a test subject. Start with the end of the lens about 20cm away from it and very slowly move towards it.

At about 14cm away, the subject should jump into focus. Try this with a number of small test subjetcs the same size as the bugs you're interested in to get an idea of how that size object looks in the viewfinder and how difficult it is to get and hold focus on it.

Is this any better than the magnification you're getting at the moment? If so, what were you doing different ?

--
You want macros? We got 'em! Check out:
http://www.pbase.com/cjed
 
very nice - still hand holding the flash! That will be a Large Red Damselfly with the 4 bands at the tip, Pyrrhosoma nymphula.
 
cjed said:
Try the following, set the lens to manual focus (I never use AF
when doing Macro work), then turn it so the focus distance window
shows 1:1 magnification (1 in yellow digits, 1.02 in green and 0.31
in white). Now, take the camera and looking through the viewfinder,
slowly approach a test subject. Start with the end of the lens
about 20cm away from it and very slowly move towards it.

At about 14cm away, the subject should jump into focus. Try this
with a number of small test subjetcs the same size as the bugs
you're interested in to get an idea of how that size object looks
in the viewfinder and how difficult it is to get and hold focus on
it.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the great info as to how to get started.
cjed said:
Is this any better than the magnification you're getting at the
moment? If so, what were you doing different ?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what I'm doing that is different or wrong but really close up things are never in focus. It may be poor vision coming into play. I'm going to practice with what you told me today and see if I can't get things in better focus and closer with subjects that don't run away.

Thanks.
--
Pamela
Perspective is Everything

Persistence and Determination Alone are Omnipotent.
 
Dragonflies should not be a problem. Some posts show closeups of fly heads etc which look like they must have used extension tubes but more lilely are just a severe crop of a sharp image like this one I took today:

pre crop:



crop:



personally i'm not much intersted in extreme close ups and like to see the insect in context but anyway your set up is plenty capable of bettering this.
 
Cool catch and very fortunate to have witnessed this sequence. The damsel flies I've seen up here in eastern Ontario are blue in colour but noticed yours are red. I once tried shooting them with my Canon S400 P&S but they were too small and moving around to register with the AF of the small camera. I'm sure I will have an easier go with a DSLR.

Speaking of the exuvia (learned a new word today..let's see if I can remember it) here is a shot of an exoskeleton of another bug I photographed awhile back. It seems silly now looking back but I actually thought this WAS an actual bug. The fact it didn't move when I went up real close may have been a sign it was not.

http://www.pbase.com/golfpic/image/32474314
cjed said:
This morning I was down at a local lake looking for emerging
Damselflies. These beautiful insects are smaller cousins to the
more well known Draginfiles. They spend most of their life in an
aquatic larval form, called nymphs, like this one :-

http://www.pbase.com/cjed/image/44026122.jpg

At around this time of year, they climb out of the water onto some
vegetation around or in the lake, and shed their final larval skin
to be come Damselflies, like this one :-

http://www.pbase.com/cjed/image/44010054.jpg

Today I was lucky enough to witness a number doing this and got a
few of the sequence down on 'film' (well, my 300D's CompactFlash
card anyway). The total time from leaving the water to sheding the
larval skin (the discarded skin is called an exuvia) is about 15 -
20 minutes, another 20-30 minutes is required to pump up the wings
an harden them so that it can take it's maiden flight.

The next four shots show stages in the emergence, ending with the
neonatal Damselfly waiting for it's wings to inflate and dry :-

http://www.pbase.com/cjed/image/44026124.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/cjed/image/44026129.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/cjed/image/44026135.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/cjed/image/44026139.jpg

There are lots more shots in the sequence from two 'hatchings',
along with other neonatal Damselfly shots in these two of my PBase
galleries :-

http://www.pbase.com/cjed/neonatal
http://www.pbase.com/cjed/emerge1

All these were taken with the 300D, Canon 100mm f2.8 USM Macro lens
and MT-24EX flash, handheld, manual focus. ISO 100 1/200th @ f16.
Post processing consists of cropping (except where indicated in the
galleries), contrast adjustment, slight saturation, resizing for
web and final sharpening.

Any comments, critisism, suggestions for improvement gladly
accepted :-)

--
You want macros? We got 'em! Check out:
http://www.pbase.com/cjed
Click to expand...
--

I know you mean well but please do not embed my images into the forum. Thanks for respecting that.

http://www.pbase.com/golfpic/gulls
http://www.pbase.com/golfpic/some_favourites
 
Justme said:
The damsel flies I've seen up here in eastern Ontario are blue in
colour but noticed yours are red.
Click to expand...
There are about 5 species of Damselfly in this lake, including blue, red, green, green/gold and brown/yellow ones! You can't tell the final colour from the neonatals as it takes a few days for the colours to come out properly. When first hatched they're pretty much all a pale green or cream colour. You can identify the species (and sex!) from the exuvia, but I'm not competent to do that.
Justme said:
Speaking of the exuvia (learned a new word today..let's see if I
can remember it) here is a shot of an exoskeleton of another bug I
photographed awhile back.
Click to expand...
Yup, that's a dragonfly exuvia - probably around 30 to 50 mm in length, very much bigger than the damselfly ones which come in around 15 - 20mm. While shooting the damselflies I noticed about 8 or 9 dragonfly exuvia on the vegetation. Unfortunately, the Dragonflies usually come out to 'hatch' at night, but I'd love to try and shoot a sequence with one of those!

--
You want macros? We got 'em! Check out:
http://www.pbase.com/cjed
 
Thanks Jim - praise indeed.

I was amazed it happend so quickly. I was expecting it to be hours waiting for them to hatch out, and it's over in a few minutes.

I also noticed what a large fatality rate there is - mostly by attack from other insects. The incomplete sequence on my site (the one that doesn't end in a Damselfly and seperate exuvia) was interrupted by an ant attack, which seemed to kill the Damselfly. I say another being attacked by a kind of small wasp, and others which had not extracted themselves without damage.

Still, it's a very interesting way to spend a couple of hours, my next project if to try and get hatching Dragonflies - but they apparently only come out at night :-(

--
You want macros? We got 'em! Check out:
http://www.pbase.com/cjed
 
Charles, as you know I look on in awe at your galleries and this has to be THE best so far.

I am not one for advertising what I have done, (particularly as I am very amateur at this) but I was lucky enough today to witness the birth of a dragonfly quite unexpectedly. No tripod with me (oh god), and as you know I have no external flash yet, so I had to do my best in difficult lighting, heavy undergrowth and an excitement at what I was seeing that was hard to control and stop my hands shaking lol.

I have just quickly put the pics up for anyone who would like to see them - nowhere near your quality though.

http://www.pbase.com/lindabuckell/larvae_to_dragonfly

Linda
 
No need to be modest about those shots Linda - they're excellent.

I am extreemly jealous. The good news is it looks like there's a chance I can see Dragonflies emerging in the daytime after all. All I'd managed to read about them suggested they usually come out at night.

Some terrific shots in that set - I'm guessing you've done minimal post-processing on them. I think with a little tweaking there's a few that will make outstanding individual photos.

I think the predominance of natural light in the shots is a good thing. Although the flash helps with giving greater depth of field and reducing camera shake it always seems to impart and artificial quality to my macro shots. It's something that I intend to work on over the summer.

Just goes to show that you should always take your DSLR, macro lens, flash and tripod with you everywhere :-) At least you had the important bits.

I look forward to seeing some more of your macro work in the future.

--
You want macros? We got 'em! Check out:
http://www.pbase.com/cjed
 
Thank you both so much for your kind comments and encouragement, it means an awful lot to me.

Charles you are right, I did hardly any post processing, no cropping as you can see, only a resize and a very small amount of unsharp mask done, as I was so eager to get the sequence up in a gallery. I have made a promise to myself to always take my tripod now, it would have made it much easier to take these pics.

I had a job getting to sleep last night thinking about what I had seen - it really is a wonderful thing to watch and I feel so priviledged to have watched it.

I did manage to get some pretty sharp damsel faces yesterday and a couple of bugs I hope to get in the gallery in the next day or so.

Thanks again for kind comments!

Linda
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top