Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Whisperer Spoke!

Many thanks to the Maricopa Audubon Society for sponsoring my talk on dragonflies last night.  I had a great time, and met a lot of wonderful people.  I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about these fascinating creatures.


I mentioned during the talk that I would put some technical information on my blog, including the field guides, the camera equipment I use, and websites.  I'll start with the field guides.

A good beginners field guide to southwest dragonflies and damselflies is the following book by Kathy Biggs:


A more advanced, and comprehensive guide to dragonflies and damselflies of western North America is this field guide by Dennis Paulson:


As for cameras, I use a point-and-shoot for general pictures, occasional macro shots, and dragonflies that are at a distance.  My camera is a Canon Powershot SX30:


There are many fine digital cameras on the market today, and they are all very good.  Canon is now making the SX50 and I'll probably get it soon.

For micro-type shots, I use a Nikon D300 with a 105mm micro lens.  It's a nice lens, and I'm very happy with the results it gives.



Finally, the slow-motion videos are taken with a point-and-shoot camera called the Casio EX-FH25, shown below.  I shoot my videos at 240 frames per second, which gives good time resolution for observing dragonfly behavior.


As far as websites go, the one for Arizona dragonflies is at the following link.  It's a great resource, with many pictures of each species, a comparison of similar species, and a list of good dragonfly locations in the state.

http://www.azdragonfly.net/welcome

Happy Dragonflying!

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