Pondhawk on Lily

Nice face on capture, Mark.  I love that background with the different tones of color, yet totally out o focus.  I wish whatever that is on the pedal of the flower wasn't there, but I don't think there is any way to clone that out.   Thank you for providing the name of him, and that he is male.  I have a lot of learning to do on identification of the creatures that I am photographing.  You mentioned in another post that you have extension tubes, have you tried to use them with this lens?  Works pretty good for a fill the frame with dragonflies and butterlies, etc. 

Very nice detail, especially in the wings!  Background goes well with the subject and lighting works well.  Is the little critter smiling?

Shirley, this is a full frame image.  Yes, extension tubes can improve close focusing, but when using this lens at 400mm, adding extension doesn't help a lot.  The extra magnification goes as the ratio of the tube length to the lens focal length, so for 40mm of extension tubes at 400 mm focal length, you gain 10% in magnification.  For this lens at 400 mm and closest focus that would increase your magnification from 0.31X to 0.34X.  I haven't tried this lens with my old 1.4X tele extender (version 1), but when I tried that TE with my Canon 180mm macro, I could see the extra softness.

Mark, I think I was misleading in my comment.  I didn't think about it even being taken that way.  At the time I was thinking about how I had tried out those extension tubes last year on the 100-400mm to make a long macro lens of sorts, and thought I would see if you ever tried it, not realizing that my comment was sounded like you could have had a full frame of this image if you had tried that!  My goof.  No, I think this shot is very nice, and certainly full frame.  I just wanted to share a technique that I had learned.  I never want to hold back anything that I have learned that works well, in my opinion.  I will try to post one of my shots that I took last year using that set-up and see how you and others on here seem to like or dislike.  What I find that the extension tube did for me was to allow me to focus closer, hence a macro lens of sorts for the skittish critters like butterflies. 

Mark, I like the head on view. Nice floral perch and a fine background.

The BG and overall color is exceptional Mark. You nailed the DOF on the DF and the lily too. Those eyes are great.

Hi Mark       The colors and detail are  beautifully captured,  the smiling face is an  extra bonus  for this  fine  image.

Albert Darmo
Canada

Beautiful dragonfly image, Mark. Terrific bg. Excellent dof managment for both the subject and bg. 

I meant to comment on this earlier, Mark.  It's a really nice image with good focus in the right places.  While the colorful BG might otherwise compete for attention, it works well with your framing.