Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia)

Image Critiques Macro/Close-up Critiques
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Image:

Argiope
Argiope1032Ă—1500 303 KB

Description: Argiope are large, colorful orb weaving spiders that make their appearance in late summer. This is a female and she is almost ready to begin egg-laying. The zig-zag pattern of silk is believed to prevent birds from running into the web. I had to carefully position my tripod and focus through some grass and anise hyssop to get this image. I also used my old 200mm f4 micro and captured images for stacking with manually adjusting the focus. The goal was to capture every hair in sharp focus.

Specific Feedback Requested:

Pertinent technical details or techniques: D850 200mm f4 micro (1/50 sec at f7.1, ISO=160) 23 images stacked with Pmax, Topaz DeNoise AI, Levels, Curves to bring out contrast. There appears to be a dark shadow on the upper edge of the abdomen which is an old piece of prey that looks like a sharpening artifact. I have not decided if I will remove it…Jim

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Wow – you certainly did get every hair sharp! Wonderful manual focus bracketing! And a very wonderful subject and composition.

The smudge doesn’t look like a stacking artifact, but it doesn’t have a visible explanation as far as I can see, so I would remove it.

The “vibrating” look to the lower web strands does appear to be an artifact. If the use of PMax refers to Zerene, you can go into the stack before saving it and clone or heal from layers that are clean there. (Probably also possible in Helicon?) Or possibly DMap would not show it with a high enough percentage. I often run both and stack them in PS and mask if needed.

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Without downloading it, I can’t even tell which part you mean. Not enough coffee?! :laughing:

Anyway…gorgeous girl you’ve got here! I bet she’s way bigger than the frog I photographed yesterday! Terrific job with the manual focus bracketing - I almost never get that right and am glad I have auto bracketing in the camera. I never did anything like this when I shot a DSLR. Instead of ouputting both a DMap and a PMax image from Zerene, I start with one in retouching and paint from the other right in the program. Usually this is when the DMap overall looks better, but has some areas of what I call goopiness that aren’t present in the PMax shot.

You did get everything really sharp and she looks serene in her domain. I miss these girls, but guess I have the even bigger fishing spiders on the dock to keep me company.

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Jim, you sure did get every hair in focus. What a great job. Nice look at her. I don’t see the spot you are talking about so I guess there goes my title of “eagle eyes” @Diane_Miller :blush:

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Jim, she’s nicely sharp throughout. I see the darkness at the top (back) of her abdomen and it doesn’t look like a stacking artifact to me…it’s too diffuse and doesn’t follow the contours of her abdomen. I do see what may be softness at the far edge of the yellow parts (but that also may be real…). The doubling of the web strands at the very bottom is a stack artifact due to web motion, that is extremely hard to avoid when shooting spiderweb stacks since the webs move so readily.

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Excellent focus stack, Jim. Wow.

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I usually try to photo Argiopes at right angles to the insect’s back to show the interesting patterning there, but your approach is better, as we get a much more 3-D effect (thanks to the great stacking you have done). My only mini-suggestion is to tone down or remove the white patch in the ULC corner. Super shot, Jim!

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