Yesterday, as I sat down to lunch on the deck I noticed a darner alight on the flowers in one of Joan’s planters hanging on the deck rail. Lunch was delayed while I went at got the camera from the house. I got a few shots through the foliage with an unusual (for darners) lateral/ventral view. As I went to move around to see if I could also get a dorsal view she (I think!) took off; such is my luck with darners.
As I headed back to the table I noticed that a grasshopper had landed on the table, so lunch was further delayed! I took a few shots with the “ode rig” (32 mm extension tube on the 70-300 mm lens) but decided that I needed more magnification and added the other two extension tubes in the set. This set up is nearly impossible to use! The range over which one can focus is very small. And even with the camera sitting on the table most of the frames were not critically sharp. Even with all of that magnification, the shot shown is only about half a frame.
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