Three tips for Photographing Dragonflies in Flight

One of the greatest joys in wildlife macro photography is that of photographing insects in flight. Dragonflies and butterflies make for interesting subjects to photograph. While no doubt it is easier to photograph them while they are still, perched on a twig or a leaf, it is however a very difficult task photographing these insects while they are on the move! 

The greatest challenge lies in tracking Dragonflies and Butterflies while they flying around. In most cases, you need to sort of predict their flight patterns. The narrow field of vision of a zoom lens (as opposed to a wide-angle lens) will restrict the amount of area you can see through the lens. In any case, you would need a zoom lens to photograph moving insects. I use a 55-250 mm and a 70-300 mm lens to do this.

The second greatest challenge is, of course, the amount of ambient light. An excess of light will give you washed out photographs while too little light will give you rather dark ones. The best time, for me to photograph these flying insects is usually in the mornings from 7:30 a.m. to about 9:00 a.m. My favourite shutter speed setting would be anything above 1/2000th of a second and above till about 1/4000th of a second. I generally prefer an ISO setting of 400 to 800 and an f-stop number varying from f-6.3 to f-8. A zoom lens with a focal length varying from 200mm to 300mm should work fine.

The third greatest challenge while photographing flying Dragonflies and Butterflies lies in getting the focus right. I prefer the centre focusing zone out of all the focusing zones. I often use a mix of manual focussing and autofocusing zones. Since these are particularly small insects, compared to birds, it is always a good idea to have solid backdrop to the subjects you are photographing. Having a solid backdrop helps you focus on the insects. By backdrop I mean, probably having a thick screen of reeds or other thick vegetation will help your camera focus better on the Dragonfly. Similarly, it is a good idea to pre-focus on an object that you deem will be closest to the Dragonfly's flight path and then switch over to manual focus to fine-tune the sharpness. In some cases, if the dragonfly is flying too fast, then I try to focus on a leaf or twig closest to the insect's flight path.