Probably an orbweaver, found in the hallway dead in it's web. This one is not great up close but cool backlighting & in situ is nice:
Spiratone 35mm f/3.5 at f/4 stack of 30 frames with about 80mm extension
I like the in situ backlight shot. Very translucent effect. It's intriguing that the spider looks much more tan colored in reflected light than in transmitted. Or is there some color balance issue?
On the second image, I notice especially in the full sized image that there are what look like trails of dust spots pointing to the general area of the head. This is unusual. Ordinarily trails like this are caused by magnification changes as focus changes through the stack, and as a result they point to the center of the image. Can you tell me what's happening in this case? Was there something unusual about the motion, or did you crop the result, or...?
The backlit shot is in an almost completely white stair well with a large window 20 feet behind plus I had saturation & contrast dialed down for my normal raw shooting method but shot jpegs, and a bit overexposed... The posed shot on moss is using an overhead projector for the light source, which seems to give a pretty natural color but I haven't really tried checking with a gray card. Sometimes there is diffused window light mixed in too which gives a nice effect normally.
Probably the sensor dust streaks are just askew due to cropping?
I'm getting great results from the new Canon 35mm bellows lens that would put these to shame.
The Voightlander 90mm APO is exquisite at 1:1 or further but useless any closer (well maybe a bit better than the 105 VR). The Leica mount design on a 35mm SLR means it has an extremely limited focus range from about .5x to 1x with a close mount and an enormous extension would be needed to make use of it reversed if at all. It's no coincidence that it is marketed as 'close focus' and no more. I was surprised by it's small size (narrow). It matches the 105 VR at 1x. I would guess it matches the 85 PC at .5x, that's it's sweet spot and probably good to infinity. It is very good wide open, almost no improvement stopping down. Should be sweet for someone with a micro 4/3 camera for infinity to 'closeup' but not macro range, the small size is perfect for that format. Think of it as better than a micro-4/3 version of a killer 180mm f/4 macro on FX at a fraction of the size & cost & half the magnification <g>.
