Thanks all!
Originally posted by Bob from Aus You can't just leave it at that! What lens did you use? How did you do your lighting and not get reflections? Do you use manual or auto focus? What are all your other secrets for getting such a fabulous shot?
Lens was Tamron SP Di 90mm F/2.8 Macro (272E), along with a Raynox DCR-250 and a homemade "Pringles-can" flash diffuser. I use manual focus, in the sense that I pre-focus the lens (at MFD in this case, I think, or very near), and then move the camera very, very slowly towards the dragonfly. When the focus is hit, I trigger the shutter. Even with peaking and magnified liveview, hitting focus is not a given because DoF is so amazingly thin and this is all handheld. Here I was lucky enough to get two shots that were stackable - one with the nose in focus, and one with the better part of the eyes, with almost identical PoVs and without any movement of the subject. So, the result is a two-shot focus stack. Aside from the stacking, I did very little post, bringing the levels down very slightly and adding just a touch of contrast...