Paper wasp

A late session at the common today, as the main object was to collect video clips for the dragon hunt video. I did twenty takes of the introduction, I sooo hate being on camera and this intro clip is a first for me, so don't laugh too loudly please, show a little sympathy for me, outside my comfort zone.

I was disappointed that the camera is not much good at the ground level shots, as the autofocus on my little Everio is just not good enough and finding the camouflaged subjects in the display without a view finder is a nightmare. For this job, I really need a proper camera, with a TTL viewfinder and manual focus. It is on my wish list, but for now, I will just have to make do.

The video is not just about dragons and will feature other creatures that I come across as I scan the grasses. I picked up quite a few clips of butterflies, hoppers, caterpillars and bugs, as well as dragon clips. I did not find any red dragons today, so I will have to return tomorrow to complete the clip collection. I picked up 44 clips for 2.5Gb, video takes so much space, took twenty minutes to upload and is going to take the rest of the day to process and edit.

As far as today's blip, I collected shots of three subjects: a large hopper, large caterpillar and the blipped wasp, all will feature in the video, hopefully, I haven't checked the quality of the clips as yet.

I was quite surprised to get a shot of the wasp, as they are usually very wary, but having collected a decent video clip, I broke out the camera and caught half a dozen images before the wasp got pissed off with me and started hovering in front of my face, that was a bit scary. Unfortunately only one of the wasp shots was any good, a reflection of my fear of wasps, not wanting to take all day messing around with the focus ring. It was a case of in - quick twiddle - snap - and out.

Dave