Macro Spiders

As autumn approaches gardens are full of a wide variety of spiders feeding on the last glut of flying insects, making fascinating macro subjects.

Small apertures are required to render sufficient depth of field often requiring supplemental flash to provide sufficient light on even the brightest of days – the closer your lens to the subject the smaller the aperture required to provide any given depth of field.

A word of warning – make sure your sensor is scrupulously clean before you attempt this type of photo. At the small apertures required every tiny speck of dust will be rendered in sharp focus causing a great deal of unnecessary spotting work.

In the image below I stopped down to f22 as I wanted to render the whole of the spiders body in sharp focus and also retain the signally strand grasped by the spider to sense vibrations of victims caught in it’s web. I could not get completely perpendicular to the subject so great care was required in framing and focussing.

Even though I have both autofocus and vibration reduction on my 105mm micro lens I turn them both off for subjects such as this. I make a rough pre-focus and then slowly rock back and forth with the camera to my eye until the spider pops into sharp focus and then smoothly press the shutter button. due to the position of the spider, it’s web and surrounding foliage use of a tripod was impossible.

Shamrock Spider (Araneus trifolium) Female

Nikon D3, 105mm f2.8 micro lens, ISO 500, 320th sec @ f22, R1C1 wireless  macro flash unit with 2 SU-800 flash units, manual focusing, hand held