Hi y'all,
I was sitting at a desert waterhole waitng (fruitlessly) for some birds to come to water. While waiting I watched an endless procession of Golden Wasps alighting on the surface of the waterhole, sipping water, and taking back off to parts unknown. I just loved their reflections in the water. The wasps were a good 15' to 18' away. I had my 500mm set up on a tripod for birds and didn't want to upset that set up. I, also, did not want to get up from wehre I was sitting to move closer and photograph the wasps. Instead, I mounted my 300mm lens and 1.4x teleconverter on my 20D and photographed the wasps from where I sat.
I actually shot this handheld with a monopod. This crop is the center 800 x 600 pixels from the full frame image, 3519 x 2345 pixels. This is the same as cropping an 8" x 10" print out of the middle of a 49" x 33" print! I added just a hair of USM in Photoshop and used NoiseNinja to soften some of the image noise. This was made on the 20D using my 300mm f 4L non-IS lens + 1.4x teleconverter. I used ISO 400, 1/1600 sec @ f 8 (1 stop down from wide open aperture) to make the exposure. I just love those Canon L-series telephoto lenses
Enjoy, my friends
The ripples add a lot to the picture IMO.
