Haemus
Arachnosquire
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2016
- Messages
- 128
I love photography and I love tarantulas so like George in Seinfeld says, its only natural to combine the two 
It started with my sister, who's vacationing in Iceland. She claimed it was impossible to shoot her L. parahybana because it was so skittish. Since I'm caring for her T, I took up her challenge and brought my DSLR/tripod from the studio and figured that was enough to get a good shot.
Not so good lol. At least not good enough. My ISO was much too high for my liking and my aperature way too low. Definitely had to get them into the studio.
My first attempt had some mixed results. I used a 500W strobe with a beauty dish as my modifier, positioned 2ft above the subject. For a portrait or a small product this should be more than enough light...At least that's what I thought. Here's a shot of my B. Smithi under that lighting.
Pretty good. Nice detail. However the lighting has too much contrast for what I'm aiming for. The shadows are too sharp and the darks are too dark. I wanted more light wrap to my subject. And I still wasn't able to max out my aperature. If I wanted to, I would have to slow my shutterspeed or increase ISO. Under studio conditions, this isn't acceptable.
This time around I upped the ante with a more standard product photography setup. I switched to a stronger 1000W strobe with a 6x4 softbox outside of a 5x5x5 lightbox instead. I would use a setup like this for something like a glossy soccer ball. Here are the results.
Especially with the B. smithi, one can see the lighting is more even and the shadows are a lot less pronounced. Unlike my first shot of the smithi, the light is soft enough to see the substrate under it. This is more what I was trying to achieve.
And the whole gang, including my sister's on top
Here's my lighting setup for the enclosure group. I shot the individual enclosures inside a 5ft lightbox (essentially a large white box with one open side) on the ground using the same light. This helped keep my enclosure edges completely white and prevent escapees from getting too far.
From this point I'm going to try shooting on black and grey backgrounds, as well as trying more dynamic lighting. Any comments or criticisms are greatly appreciated!
It started with my sister, who's vacationing in Iceland. She claimed it was impossible to shoot her L. parahybana because it was so skittish. Since I'm caring for her T, I took up her challenge and brought my DSLR/tripod from the studio and figured that was enough to get a good shot.
Not so good lol. At least not good enough. My ISO was much too high for my liking and my aperature way too low. Definitely had to get them into the studio.
My first attempt had some mixed results. I used a 500W strobe with a beauty dish as my modifier, positioned 2ft above the subject. For a portrait or a small product this should be more than enough light...At least that's what I thought. Here's a shot of my B. Smithi under that lighting.
Pretty good. Nice detail. However the lighting has too much contrast for what I'm aiming for. The shadows are too sharp and the darks are too dark. I wanted more light wrap to my subject. And I still wasn't able to max out my aperature. If I wanted to, I would have to slow my shutterspeed or increase ISO. Under studio conditions, this isn't acceptable.
This time around I upped the ante with a more standard product photography setup. I switched to a stronger 1000W strobe with a 6x4 softbox outside of a 5x5x5 lightbox instead. I would use a setup like this for something like a glossy soccer ball. Here are the results.
Especially with the B. smithi, one can see the lighting is more even and the shadows are a lot less pronounced. Unlike my first shot of the smithi, the light is soft enough to see the substrate under it. This is more what I was trying to achieve.
And the whole gang, including my sister's on top
Here's my lighting setup for the enclosure group. I shot the individual enclosures inside a 5ft lightbox (essentially a large white box with one open side) on the ground using the same light. This helped keep my enclosure edges completely white and prevent escapees from getting too far.
From this point I'm going to try shooting on black and grey backgrounds, as well as trying more dynamic lighting. Any comments or criticisms are greatly appreciated!
