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.
Amazing shot! Congrats. Dragonflies in flight are insanely challenging subjects.
What was the actual focal length you used?
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.
It’s a migrant hawker aka scarce hawker, I think. They’re a bugger to capture in flight, so well done.
Thank you