Well if you thought capturing birds in flight was difficult,  wait until you try this!

Insects such as Dragonflies, Damselflies, Butterflies and Bees are small fast critters with erratic flight patterns. Capturing an image of such a creature presents several challenges , but I believe I have a few solutions.

    First, their small size means that very few lenses other than true macro lenses can focus close enough to give you a decent sized subject in the viewfinder. In order to get sufficient magnification, we have a couple of options. We could use a macro lense, but unless it is a telephoto like the Canon 180mmf3.5, we won’t be able to get close enough to the insect without scaring them away(or getting stung!)

    You could use the above mentioned lens with a 1.4x teleconverter. The teleconverter makes it’s focal length approximately 250mm which gives some working distance. The second solution, which I prefer, is to use a long telephoto such as a 400mm lense. Standard 400mm lenses however, will not give enough magnification at their minimum focus distance. To get around this, I have used an extension tube, or, in the case of these images, I used a close focussing 400mm lens. These images were all taken with a Nikon 200-400f4 with and without a 1.4x teleconverter. The beauty of this lens is that it allows me to focus down to 6ft which gives me sufficient magnification to photograph dragonflies and bees.

    The second obstacle to overcome is dealing with their erratic and often very fast flight patterns. A fast autofocussing camera is a must, as is a high frame rate of at least 6 frames per second. My technique is to select the center point, continous or servo AF, and use “focus” point expansion, but only to the points immediately surrounding the middle point. If you use too many points then you run the risk that the camera will focus on the background instead of your subject. To minimize this, I try to position myself so that I have as clean and uncluttered background as possible. I also prefocus at a distance that gives a subject that takes up about 1/4 the frame. Any larger , and it becomes very difficult to find in the viewfinder.

    To actually capture an insect flying by is extremely difficult to do, but there is a method that increases your odds considerably. Insects such as dragonflies are creatures of habit with specific feeding territories and will often hover in the same location. If you observe them for a while, you can figure out their pattern and know where to setup, keeping in mind the background of course.

    The next consideration are the camera settings. Generally, if the light is constant on your subject, I will use manual exposure to keep the light meter from being fooled. The shutter speed setting is very important as is the aperture. Most of the time, you want as fast a shutter speed as you can get away with given the lighting conditions. Depth of field is very narrow at these magnifications, so I avoid shooting wide open, preferring to shoot around f8 or so. I try to maintain at least 1/1000sec. Once you dip below that, you’re asking for blurred images and/or subject blurring. The top and third dragonfly images were shot with shutter speeds below 1/1000sec(1/800 and 1/640), the middle image at 1/2500sec. By comparing the three images, you can see how the wings are much sharper in the high shutter speed case. Unless you are lucky at the time of exposure, and the wings are just at the end of their travel, you may have hopelessly blurred images at slow shutter speeds.

    To summarize, the high magnification means a narrow depth of field, but increasing your aperture results in slower shutter speeds. The practical limit then will be around f8 or f11, subject to your shutter speed requirement. Fast autofocus and knowledge of your subjects behaviour all give you an edge, however, it is still pretty tough shooting!