Test shots: Pachydiplax longipennis exuvia

A Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) exuvia was received from Andy Davidson, a graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) | exuvia (dorsal)

Test shots of the specimen were taken using a relatively small aperture of f/20 for greater depth of field. Each photo is a “one-off,” that is, not a composite image. Focus stacks will be created sometime in the near future, after the exuvia is rehydrated and posed for better composition.

Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) | exuvia (dorsal)

Extremely shallow depth-of-field is a common problem in macro photography. Depth-of-field increases as aperture decreases — in other words, they are inversely related. In this case, an aperture of f/20 was insufficient for the entire subject to be acceptably in focus so it will be necessary to create some focus stacks.

Also notice the background of the second photo looks darker and bluer than the first one. That was caused by the fact that the subject was farther from the front of the lens. There are work-arounds for this lighting problem, but hey, like the title of this blog post says these are “test shots.”

Related Resources

• Precious cargo, a blog post by Walter Sanford.
• Test shots: Pantala flavescens exuvia
• Test shots: Erythemis simplicollis exuvia

Tech Tips

The following equipment was used to shoot both of the macro photographs featured in this post: Fujifilm X-T1 digital camera; Fujifilm MCEX-11 extension tube; and Fujinon XF80mm macro lens. The camera was set for both manual exposure and manual focus. That’s right, a switch on the camera body is used to set the type of focus. It’s a Fujifilm thing. Actually, back-button focus was used to autofocus the image and adjusted manually as necessary. That’s also a Fujifilm thing.

A Godox XProF radio flash trigger, mounted on the hotshoe of my X-T1, was used to control a pair of off-camera Godox TT685 Thinklite TTL Flashes (TT685F and TT685C) set for radio slave mode. Each flash was fitted with a snap-on plastic diffuser.

Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 was used to spot-heal and sharpen both images.

Copyright © 2018 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

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Tags: Blue Dasher dragonfly, exuvia, Family Libellulidae (Skimmers), gear talk, James River, Pachydiplax longipennis, studio photography