Not sure of the ID on this nickel sized spider but had the chance to observe it building its web. You can see the silk coming from the spinneret if you look closely at the largest image. The light was pretty weak so I had to use the high ISO and subsequently a lot of noise reduction. Even so I only got a handful of keepers out of a couple hundred captures. My 200mm macro is not a fast focusing lens to begin with and coupled to the adapter for the A7RIII autofocus was pretty much impossible. The focus peaking feature made it a bit easier to get manual focus but then I was also fighting a faint breeze and the spider’s own quick movements. The BG is a TaiTai plant. All comments welcome. >=))>
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Sony A7RIII
Minolta 200mm macro
ISO 6400, 1/30 @ f16
I love this bottom view and the spinerets are pretty great. Great leg position & texture, too. If you have a top view I might be able to come up with an ID. My spider book is fairly complete.
Even with all the issues a really nice look at this guy, Bill. Details of the silk strands are nice and I love that background. I downloaded this and dropped it into iNaturalist for an ID. They say Mabel Orchard Webweaver, but of course the AI in iNat is not infallible.
Very impressive, Bill. I think you capture very good details in the spider, and that background makes the spider and the web stand out nicely. Glad you put the effort in shooting 200 images so you had a few keepers. You managed the noise very well in your processing.
I mean to say something about this, too, Shirley. That it’s par for the course these days, but still time consuming. I deleted over 200 shots from my loon session - ones with the head underwater or facing away or out of focus. That still left me a ton and only one was really good enough. Funny. Glad I don’t shoot film anymore!!
Really nice details on this very colorful spider! Beautiful background too! Sounds like me with all the shots you take! I’m so glad I can with digital. There would be no way with film, except going broke!
I grew up on slide film and still look back on those days fondly. It taught me to pay attention to exposure and comp looking through the viewfinder. Sometimes I think digital makes us lazy. We shoot away because we know we can and then hope that one or two hit the mark. Another thing I find is that when I edited slides I was pretty ruthless and could fill a trash can pretty quickly where with digital I’ll keep marginal stuff knowing full well I’ll never do anything with those images. At least a hard drive doesn’t take up the space of file cabinets full of slides.
Great capture, Bill, as others have said, the detail and colors are fantastic. I also shot slide film and still have boxes of them. I rarely pull them out any more just can’t seem decide what to do with them. Nice shot.
I think that is true sometimes, but it also gives us the freedom to experiment that I don’t think we had in the film days. At least I didn’t quite so much. Recently I came up with a formula of sorts that approximates the film experience with a digital camera. I’ve only done it twice, but am thinking of running a “roll” of Tri-x through and see what I can do.
Which is a huge deal coupled with the immediate feedback of digital. With film you had to wait to see how things turned out and if the conditions were fleeting you would be out of luck. I’ve had a number of shoots around the house where I brought the images into the computer and went right back outside to remedy some deficiency. In fact I did it with this particular subject when the first batch were all rejects due to motion blur. I kept bumping the ISO until I got a few capture keepers. The ISO change is another thing not possible with film. I mostly shot Velvia 50 and Astia 100 with the occasional use of Provia 400. If one was going to have any chance at stopping action you also needed some heavy fast expensive glass. Maybe the good old days weren’t so good after all. >=))>
Bill, everything was perfect on this photo. The sharp details and color contrast, the direction of the spider with the web, and the color of the background and how soft it is. My 180 macro is slow to focus as well but that is a problem more with fast movers. The other issue I have with HH photography is the moving back and forth of either myself or the subject.
One thing I do is put my upper arms on the chest and use my lower arms like a mono pod. Then holding in my core I get good balance and control, like anything else this not always work perfect. The noise reduction software and better cameras these days allow high ISO. If I am not using a flash, I always set the camera in fast shooting mode that way if I do move one of them is sharp.
Lovely photo Bill. I really like the colors esp. of the spider. A nice extended pose of the busy spider and a very good square on view of both the spider and the web.
Really nice work Bill. A fine example of a wonderful small subject combined with very thoughtful photography and processing. Taking a shot at this with my phone and Google Lens took me to Orchard Orbweaver Spider.
>=))>