Dragonfly

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Dragonfly

I’m guessing some kind of Hawker dragonfly, but I can’t be sure.

Dinton Pastures, nr. Reading, UK

Kind of absurdly photoed with a Canon R5 MkII + RF200-800 - but there were two of them with rather predictable pathing, and going close to reeds allowing focus to be preset. 1/1250s speed which says something about their wing speed as well.

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It’s a migrant hawker aka scarce hawker, I think. They’re a bugger to capture in flight, so well done.

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Amazing shot! Congrats. Dragonflies in flight are insanely challenging subjects.

What was the actual focal length you used?

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OP

Double checked and found it wasn’t quite what I thought - 707mm, rather than the 800mm I surely intended.

f/9, ISO-400

Luck played a major part, but watching for them repeating patterns of flight, so I roughly knew where they would go really helped - I really didn’t expect anything this clear, especially as I was relying on reeds to set my focal distance rather than homing in manually as I watched the pathing.

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