Wah red one... yummy..... Did you try other angles at this fella? The side shot is quite over-done, IMHO, and with narrow DOF it is hard to get focus on the point of interest that you are trying to obtain. It would help to use spot focusing (if your camera has that feature) to just focus on an important feature that you'd like to emphasize (usually the head or back) and make that the sharpest point in your picture. Narrowing the depth of the subject (e.g. shooting right behind it) also helps give sharper overall pictures when you have a limited DOF. atwl
It's very difficult to take dragonflies without using any closeup filters, which is why I only have very few decent shots. I went as close as 20 cm. Any closer, they would fly away! Some landed on some stone, and the results are not very nice... Actually my biggest mistake was I didn't use smaller aperture. I will use max aperture the next time. I might be going there again tomoro!
This time I use the correct aperture setting, but still couldn't get another angle without being ruined by the background.