Spider
I don’t have any idea what kind of spider this is. Strangely, I could find no good spider identification site on the net. There are a couple, but they’re not easy to use, and in any case I couldn’t find anything close to this one.
Taken with my E-500, 50mm lens, and a cheap-o off-camera Quantaray flash with a Photoflex umbrella diffuser. It started to rain while I was taking the picture, so the umbrella was handy. The background is dark because it’s relatively distant dirt unilluminated by the flash.
I want to see if I can find a good simple optical slave hot-shoe trigger, so that I can use my old OM series flash instead of the wimpy Quantaray. That’d let me crank down the aperture a couple of stops (I think) and give me a little more depth-of-field.
Belated Update
The spider, apparently named “Samson”, with some sort of flying ant creature.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:50 am
Beautiful shot. Where was the flash/diffuser relative to the camera?
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:15 am
The flash was above, in front of, and slightly to the right of the camera, pointed up into the umbrella which was aimed down at the spider. The camera flash was set to 1/64 power, which is enough to trip the slave but not enough to provide any significant illumination.
The umbrella was up probably four or five feet above the subject. Those little strobes are fine for this sort of macro work, but they’re just barely adequate for people portraits. One of these days I’ll be crazy enough to order a B800 from Alien Bees.
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:39 pm
The spider is still there. This is not, apparently, a transient spider. This arachnid has taken up long-term residence on that particular mint flower spray.