Dragon Spreads Its Wings

[Dave L]

The pictures below highlight the advantages and disadvantages of small compact digital
cameras. A couple of years ago I built a moderately large garden pond in our front lawn. And now we are enjoying the spectacle of various wildlife creatures visiting our patch. Of particular interest has been the dragonflies and their nymphs. The nymphs remain in the pond for several years and feed off small fish and other creatures by projecting their 'mask' or lower jaw at the prey. At the end of their cycle they climb out of the water and onto vegetation where they hatch out of their nymph skin and spread their wings and fly off - only to live for a few short months. To see the nymphs clinging on to a leaf is fascinating - to watch it finally spread its wings is a great pleasure. Tonight for the first time I noticed the dragon fly ready to spread its wings - the final act of the nymph and the first action of the emerging dragonfly adult.

These photos were taken during early evening sun with a slight breeze in attendance using my trusty inexpensive compact digicam Minolta Dimage X20 (2 mp, no optical screen) and with auto macro mode. Auto macro makes things easier (specially when crouching in a difficult location) but perhaps fails to give an entirely focussed sharp pic.

Thoughts, complaints, observations welcomed.

[gahspidy]

Dave,
these are good. especially for a point and shoot. that first pic is the fav for me. I really like the clarity, lighting framing and the little blue flowerrs in the bg. Yes, not quite as sharp as a good lens on an slr might have done, but this is sharp enough to keep it good. Did you try a bit of unsharpmask on these? just a small amount would do it. If you would like me to do it for you would be happy to.
but do not get me wrong, I think it is good enough as it is.
Good work

[Dave L]

thanks gary - explain the unsharpmask for me - do you apply with software package ?

cheers

dave

[gahspidy]

thanks gary - explain the unsharpmask for me - do you apply with software package ?

cheers

dave

Yes,
It isavailable with most image editing programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, and Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8( which is the one I use, although photoshop is by far the more popular one) Here is an example of a unsharp mask applied to your image. It was done with a small setting of ( Radius- 1.00 , Strength - 70 , clipping - 3 )
The image was nice as it was , but a little unsharpmask just helps to bring out the tiniest details , like the hairs on the insects legs are a bit more defined now. Unsharpmask does not perform miracles, the image must be somewhat sharp to begin with such as yours . A image that is suffering from lack of focus or sharpness to begin with usually cannot be helped much with the mask.

[Dave L]

thanks for that . It seemed to sharpen the pic a bit more...will look out for that ! I appreciate your advice - I do feel that I post too much on here and hope i don't upset folks too much ! probably bored with me by now !

[Chunk]

thanks for that . It seemed to sharpen the pic a bit more...will look out for that ! I appreciate your advice - I do feel that I post too much on here and hope i don't upset folks too much ! probably bored with me by now !

Not at all - keep them coming -and keep critiquing other's as well.

Most pics seem to gain some sharpness back with the unsharp mask after loosing some of their original sharpness during size reduction

[Dave L]

cheers for that - will keep postin' !

[gahspidy]

thanks for that . It seemed to sharpen the pic a bit more...will look out for that ! I appreciate your advice - I do feel that I post too much on here and hope i don't upset folks too much ! probably bored with me by now !

No way Dave. . .I like looking at your posts, don't hold out on us now

[Dave L]

....grabs hanky....thanks nice folks.....I am very moved by the response.....