Garden Spider

Every 30 days the site administrators will pick a favorite macro or close-up image from one of the "Macro and Close-up" galleries to be featured on the front page of the www.photomacrography.net website.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

leonardturner
Posts: 713
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 11:40 am
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA

Garden Spider

Post by leonardturner »

Image

Nikon 850, existing light
Last edited by leonardturner on Tue Jun 02, 2020 4:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

An interesting perspective! Well done.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

leonardturner
Posts: 713
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 11:40 am
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA

Post by leonardturner »

Thanks, Mark. Not a natural perspective, but I found it interesting. Incidentally, I just learned of research (using colored paper spider surrogates) that indicated that the vivid coloration of these guys was attractive to prospective prey.

Leonard

rjlittlefield
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Re: Garden Spider

Post by rjlittlefield »

Leonard, this is a great image!

I am curious about the setup.

In the larger image that you sent to me for the front page, I noticed that the embedded information reported by Windows File Explorer > Properties > Details says Nikon D850, 480 mm focal length, f/6.3, exposure time 0.6 seconds, with tags of "In-camera stack, level 2". The file name suggested a 50-frame stack.

Is all that correct? What more can you tell me about the setup for shooting this beast?

Best regards,
--Rik

leonardturner
Posts: 713
Joined: Thu Mar 14, 2013 11:40 am
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA

Re: Garden Spider

Post by leonardturner »

Thank you, Rik,

You are quite correct. The spider chose to construct its hunting platform in an area that was both obvious and devilishly difficult to get close to, making my go-to 105 macro not a feasible choice. Since the Nikon D850 has the ability to shoot stacks in-camera, and can do this with a variety of lenses, I decided to drop back to a place where I could get a tripod on the ground and use the Nikon 200-500 f5.6 rather than the macro, which lacked the reach. 50 images were made with existing light over a minute and 23 seconds or thereabout. The spacing I set was "2" rather than the usual "5" I would tend to use for the 105; this was a guess, of course, as I was in new territory with the big lens.

It might have produced a better image with a set level of "1", but the web was gently drifting back and forth in the wind (easily seen by scrolling rapidly through the images in the stack) and a longer shoot time might have made things even worse. I thought that your Zerene program did a remarkably good job of dealing with the situation. The final image was rotated some 90 degrees to an unnatural but (I thought) visually interesting position.

Leonard

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