Monoarachne

[Ironwood]

Not something you see everyday....

[seaslug]

Wouldn't like to wake up to one next to me!

[LJG]

Hmm, better at your house than mine!! Nice shot with perfect lighting on my screen

[Ironwood]

Cheers Greg and Lloyd. These little fellas are the characters of the spider world, and pretty harmless to humans, they do have poison to kill their insect prey, but never heard of someone getting bitten by one. They regularly jump onto my lens or my hand when I am photographing them.

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day Brad

I've just spend 3 weeks in Hervey Bay and while there I was talking to one of their camera club fellas who specialises in super-macro stuff he mentioned that he 'sleeps' his spiders inside a tea-leaf strainer sitting over a small amount of acetone in a jar. Once the spider drops off he's got 3 to 5 minutes before it decides to bugga-off again

During that time he carefully drapes the spider onto a leaf or flower or whatever, uses watchmaker's head lens unit to see by & tweezers to carefully adjust feet etc into a life-like pose

He then shoots between 35 and 70 frames for focus-shift imagery - moving the subject via a board mounted onto a threaded steel rod - where one turn equals 1mm, and his "control handle" is a 4-inch diameter wooden thing with 30 nails very accurately placed around the circumference ... so that each nail around the outside gives him 1/30 of 1mm horizontal movement. Exposure is via flash thru 2- light tents to fully diffuse and create shadowless lighting

After the spider is returned to the wild, his image stacking processing takes about 3 hours, and the end result is so stupendous it is getting gold awards around the world

Not my cup of tea as the saying goes, but wow - what amazing results he gets

ps- you're not [very] far behind

Phil

[Ironwood]

That's an interesting story Phil. I am glad he's not killing them, I have no doubt that's what some do. Mine are always shot in the wild, so always single image, I use manual focus and handheld for all my shots. Though I would love to be able to get more DOF with my shots. I haven't measured how much I am getting, but would guess its about 1mm at f16. I find if you can get the eyes in perfect focus it gives an illusion that more is in focus, the 90% of my shots that just miss getting the eyes sharp, are deleted without a second glance

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day again Brad

It brings back memories from 1000 years ago, when I was a [hobby] student at the RMIT Diploma of Photography course ... where I cherry-picked units while doing my 'official' studies in Production Engineering.

The college wanted students to use the "old fudgy bellows cameras that looked like from the 1950s" while I had this spunky Pentax with its 50mm lens that focussed down to 18 inches. I knew from magazine reading that I could conquer the world with this unit. [you can start to laugh now]

So my efforts at F16 were compared with other students efforts - using f22 - f32 - f45 - f64 and f90 ... and later on with students still using f16 like I was, but employing the camera's front & rear Tilt & Swivel movements

I very quickly left the Pentax in the locker and used their 'old fuddy-duddy' cameras

Later on I was to DIY my own macro lens using an enlarger lens that went to f45, attached to an extension tube and in that mode I was able to get some beaut macro stuff.
All long ago nowadays

Phil

[Isac]

Great image Ironwood. Liking the B&W treatment. Phil, has your mate from Hervey Bay got a website?

[Ironwood]

Great image Ironwood. Liking the B&W treatment...........

Cheers Isac. This is one where I think the mono version is better than the colour original.

[LJG]

Interesting Phil, that is dedication for you but worth it if he wins awards. I wish I had the patience for that type of thing but never seem to have the time these days.