Dragonflies: Can the 300mm pro match this?

Tony Rogers wrote:

vass wrote:

Guess we will all have to wait and see when I get around to posting the 300mm shots i took last week

Sorry I have a huge backlog of photos and these were very worthy of posting first.

These are Australian Emerald photo's I shot about 2 weeks ago with 40-150mm + MC-14. Last two are picked from a sequence the day before. All were good but I chose the best two to keep the photo numbers down.

Anyway Enjoy these before I give my 40-150mm pro a little rest (actually already doing that )

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Great pictures!

I think the 300mm will be able to match this as long as the photographer is skilled enough to keep the dragonfly in the frame. Not an easy task at 210mm and a lot more difficult at 300mm.

I am hoping that the focus limiter will help the 300mm with this kind of subject. When I have tried to photograph flying dragonflies, one of the main problems I get is that the AF chooses to focus on the background rather than the insect, particularly if you can't get low to the water. It may be that limiting the focus to the 1.4m to 4m setting (which will actually focus a bit further away than 4m apparantly) will help where you can contrive to have the background further away than that. We'll see. Too early in the year for draginflies in the UK at the moment.

Most of the time my subjects are in the middle of the frame but yes you can miss them out of frame at further distances if your trying to fill the frame more. Depending on the Dragonfly I am usually finding that's its easier to follow them further out as long as I'm trying to fill lets say 50% of it with the dragonfly. Advantage to 300mm here as I just sit further away and don't have to move the lens as fast.
The focus limiter I'm 50/50 on at the moment. If I was shooting dragonflies or small things close I set it but then in my situation i'm after birds most the time and it can catch you out if that birds comes out of no where. But if your only after dragonflies then I recommend it.