Looking at great photos of diminutive Australian jumping spiders was one of the things that made me hanker after a macro lens.
I see them outside every now and again. Today, there was one just outside the backdoor, and BBQ preparations had to be delayed while I scrambled to dig out camera, flash and tripod. Macro lens was already on D90 and slapped on the little SB400 flash. Tripod proved next to useless in the situation - spider was on the wall beyond the railing so there was no way to get the tripid close enough. Tried using it as a monopod but that made getting the angle hard. Resorted to hand held. I reckon the end of the lens was 2-3 inches away from the spider.
Hand held worked out OK, though it was very hard to find an angle where I could get most of the little fellow in focus, even shooting at f32 the depth of field was quite shallow. The orientation of shots is unchanged - so if the spider is facing down, that is the way he was on the wall too. Some minor exposure adjustment, sharpening. Some are cropped.
First shot is uncropped to give a sense of just how small the spider is - he is sitting adjacent to the mortar between the bricks.
a crop of the same shot
nice one of the big front eyes, as shot, then as cropped
cropped
Python, I think it is called video. I haven't really tried it yet. Even then it might be tricky because they really are very fast.
Paul, I was pretty happy with how these turned out I have to say.
Posted by: Thygocanberra | Wednesday, 22 February 2017 at 09:28 PM
Very nice photos. I like the background colour.
Posted by: Paul | Tuesday, 21 February 2017 at 08:43 AM
Set the camera to 400 frames a second and poke the poor arthropod with a stick.
Posted by: PythonMagus | Monday, 20 February 2017 at 05:22 PM
I had to think about that comment.
To be honest, I am not sure I have ever seen a photo of a jumping spider jumping ...
Posted by: Thygocanberra | Sunday, 19 February 2017 at 02:58 PM
Mid air shot?
Posted by: PythonMagus | Sunday, 19 February 2017 at 11:12 AM