Though HOA covenants clearly prohibit the blasting of enlargment and shrink rays within the neighborhood, my one neighbor, who shall remain nameless, clearly doesn’t care. This poor girl became so heavy after being enlarged that her legs couldn’t support her weight. I insisted that my neighbor return her to regular size, and fortunately his enlargement ray did have an “original size” option. Apparently he ordered it out of a Sky Mall catalog on a recent flight to Cabo. Even back to original size I was astonished at the mass of this female Bold Jumping Spider, and questioned whether the ray finished the job. This female was plump with an egg sack about to be deposited.
For these shots I placed her on the wood stump from beneath which she was found. As a Salticid, she didn’t want to stay still, but would scurry around and then stop for about 8 seconds until moving on again. With my Olympus E-M5 II primed to shoot a burst of 45 focus bracketed images, I waited for the Spider to come to a stop, placed my beanbag in front of her, quickly positioned the camera, and fired the shot sequence. As you can probably imagine it took many tries before I captured a complete front to back focus stack without her moving off in the middle of the sequence. The process was fast because I wasn’t using a flash, just natural diffused light from the cloudy sky. Such a deep focus stack of a fidgety Jumping Spider would be impossible with a regular camera and focus rail.
Equipment used:
Olympus OM-D E-M5 II Camera
Olympus 60mm Macro Lens
EXIF:
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5 II
Lens: Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm f2.8 Macro
Filter: n/a
Configuration: normal
Extension Tubes: no
Image Stack: 45 images
Stackware: Zerene
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60th sec
ISO: 200
Light Source: Ambient cloudy sky
Stabilization: Beanbag
Subject Size: 15mm
Species: Bold Jumping Spider, Female (Phidippus audax)
Location: Fort Collins, Colorado
In this image though I took 45 focus bracketed shots, I only used 20 of them because I like the shallow depth of field on the Spider’s abdomen.
Bryan, really enjoy your skills. Great photos! Besides events like Broomfield photo club, do you do any small group training / shooting? I have purchased the Olympus camera and macro lens with a couple successful shots but would like to improve. Thanks in advance. Doug
Hi Doug, Thanks for asking. At the moment I’m not doing any workshops, but perhaps in the future.