Here's a bit of a departure from my usual, not being a 'macro person,' but I discovered I'm still pretty good at approaching dragonflies. And I'm quite happy how this older zoom performed here. Cropped in a good bit for visual interest: let's see how this looks via web-host.

[mel]

Wow. Nice. I kinda really suck at macros of stuff that's actually alive. Love the location you gave. A shrubbery. Lol.

[shooz]

Nice one.
I like that all four wings are sharp.

[Sailor]

Super - the wing detail is terrific. I had no ideas dragonflies had such "detailed" wings.

Jer

[eaglem]

A great capture, hard to catch these guys standing still.

[shawnxji]

What a beautiful photo with smooth bokeh, thanks for sharing!

[Ratmagiclady]

Heehee. Well, this fellow was pretty cooperative: it seems to me the bigger ones are less-likely to be skittish. Not afraid of much, it seems. Anyway, the 'model' was very cooperative.

There's nothing in frame for scale, but this guy's about twice the size of the average dragonfly you see. I've seen bigger, but the size surely didn't hurt. This lens doesn't even proclaim itself to be 'Macro.' (I was perhaps two feet away. EXIF says I was set at 67mm: definitely, this lens has some sweet spots: you should see the detail in the full-sized file. Not bad at all for a 'poor gal's Tammie.' I don't tend to expect much from zooms, and had only hoped to get into something serviceable while I put resources elsewhere, so it's a hundred dollars well-spent. I think I'm becoming attached. But anyway, that's why there's plenty of DOF. I wasn't really extremely close. )