jumping spider portraits

[rjlittlefield]

I'm experimenting with some new lighting equipment, so I decided to play with photographing the same subject in a couple of different ways.

Just when I was wondering what to photograph, I happened to look down onto the floor near my chair, and was surprised to see what appeared to be a medium sized spider lying on its back. Closer inspection revealed a recently deceased jumping spider. After some ultrasonic cleaning, it looked pretty good except for the cracked carapace that explained its demise.

Anyway, here we have jumping spider two ways.

First, a dark sinister foreboding version with totally misleading eyes that seem to bore right through you...



Crossed-eye stereo:



And then one looking a bit more natural...





A full resolution version of this last stereo can be downloaded from HERE.

Optics were a Componon 50mm f/2.8 set at f/4.0, stacked with a Raynox DCR-150, slightly short-focused to give measured 3.83X magnification. Focus-stepped at .040 mm, 97 and 101 frames, Zerene Stacker synthetic stereo at +-3 degrees. Electronic flash illumination, three flashes through hemispheric diffuser for first image, main and top flash through paper for second image. Canon T1i camera.

--Rik

[Sumguy01]

Very nice.
Thanks for sharing

[klevin]

T1i? How interesting....
Interesting photos, though, and a good example of how you don't need the latest/greatest to get good photos, especially under controlled conditions.

[rjlittlefield]

Thanks.

Yes, T1i. Sometimes we forget that if these cameras do not fail catastrophically, they generally degrade quite slowly. This particular body has a 15 megapixel APS-C sensor, pixel pitch 4.69 micron pixels, that gives almost the same image quality that it did when new. Using the Nikon rule of sensor pitch = Nyquist limit at diffraction cutoff, this sensor is well matched to effective f/17, and that's consistent with what I found in experimental tests long ago, HERE and in the surrounding thread. So, despite its advancing years, I have no hesitation in using this camera with low mag Mitutoyo objectives (effective f/18 at nominal magnification) or even the f/15 combo used for these images. I also have no doubt that a newer sensor would find some additional detail and have less noise, but those improvements are not high enough on my priority list to have made the cut. I would be much more interested in upgrading my flash units so as to avoid frame-to-frame variation, but so far I've not learned how to do that.

--Rik