How do you photograph your spiders?

[becca81]

As I'm sure we're all aware, we have some people (priZZ, GoTerps, metallica, Incubu5, and many others) on the boards that take awesome photos. They consistently are clear and very "natural-looking."

What are your secrets? How do you get your Ts into position? Do you use their regular setups or do you have special setups that you use just for pictures? What kind of lighting do you use? Anything special or just the regular flash on the camera? Special lens?

I'm not just asking this to the members listed above - but to anyone who can offer any tips/tricks that they've discovered.

 

[Psoulocybe]

Though I don't have many tarantula pictures up becca, i can give you some pointers.

First... for lighting... which is the most important aspect of equipment.... NONE!!!! You want natural light. Even the best stand alone flashes don't stand up to good ol' ma nature.

If you have to shoot indoors or at night, or in a dimly light area... do not use your on camera flash. they are all junk. Set up 2 or 3 different types of lights to get a full spectrum at different angles. it's really just experimenting... that's the artistic part of photography.

Experimentation is all that'll help. One mans technique will not always work for another... whether it be because of hardware differences or just stylistic differences.

 

[Windchaser]

I believe the trick is good lighting and proper exposure. Also, a decent camera helps, but lighting and exposure will play a bigger role in whether the picture is high quality or not. I have been experimenting with different lighting at home. One of the things I have added to my arsenal is a ring flash. This type of flash which mounts to the lens is very handy for close in macro work. I am still learning how to use it effectively, but this has been improving my photos. BTW, I use a Sony F717 5 Megapixel digital camera.

The other thing that helps is to take LOTS of pictures. Most professional photographers will tell you that for every good picture they get, they tossed dozens away. Fortunately, this approach is more feasible with digital cameras, since you aren't payig for each picture.

 

[metallica]

http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showpost.php?p=294213&postcount=1

now i don't use the forrest setup any more, i just take my spiders to the forrest. real daylight and great backgrounds.

how you light your subject is a personal choice. i myself find Prizz pics too "hard" lighted. could be the tubelight he uses, or the photoshop filter. again this is a pure personal thing..... i do think he makes fine pictures!!

hope this helps

 

[Lorgakor]

Awesome post Metallica! That will help me alot! Thanks for posting this question Becca, it is one that I have been wanting to know about too. :clap:

 

[metallica]

Awesome post Metallica! That will help me alot! Thanks for posting this question Becca, it is one that I have been wanting to know about too. :clap:

and with one search you would have had the answer allready long ago..... :wall:

 

[GoTerps]

I've yet to find the time, or have the interest, to get into the "natural" background thing... most of my pics are in the enclosure, on corkbark, or on my hand (most hate, but me like ).

I think my pics turn out pretty well for using a 5 year old camera (Olympus C-3000, 3.2mp). I would like to start trying external lighting, but alas.

What works for me to get clear, crisp pictures is turning on the manual focus, and I turn it all the way to it's closest setting, which on my camera is 20mm. I then take a bunch of pictures (moving the camera slightly closer and further away) of which only a few turn out nicely. The only photoshop filter I use on the pics is the "hue", b/c every shot my camera takes is off in one direction.

 

[Lorgakor]

and with one search you would have had the answer allready long ago..... :wall:

Yeah, if I had been actively looking, which I haven't. It is just recently I have been wanting to do more with my photos, so I hadn't gotten around to looking yet. But sorry I offended you by not finding your post sooner.

 

[metallica]

it was not to you personal, perhaps more to becca.

 

[becca81]

it was not to you personal, perhaps more to becca.

Gee, thanks.

For the record, I almost always attempt a search before asking this type of question. However, when I did search I found about 2 or 3 other threads, only one of which was a bit helpful but contained what I considered to be information that was a bit outdated in terms of equipment. I did not find your thread in the search, probably because of the terms that I used.

All of the specific questions that I was curious about are not necessarily addressed in the other threads that I located and several of the people who posted are not currently active on the boards, which makes questioning their original posts/topics/information a bit difficult.

When I do find a good thread (such at the one you linked to and another that I found) I always save it for future reference.

Anyways - you mentioned that now you "take your spiders to the forest" instead of using the forest setup. How do the spiders react to being outside in that setting? How do you deal with spiders that are more nervous / jumpy / fast? Do you have someone that assists you in case of a problem or do you do it alone?

 

[ChrisNCT]

Hello,

FYI: I take decent pictures using my Canon EOS Digital. I can't get really good macro shots yet but as soon as I can get the macrolight and macro lens...I'll be all set!

I normally use flourescent lights for my lighting. I zoom all the way up on the macro setting which will give me a focus distnace of about 4" from the object. But as mentioned before about the macro lens..... it will focus manually down to under 1" from the subject being photographed.

 

[T.Raab]

HI Becca,

i use normal enclose and external setups - it depends how the enclose look like and if i will be able to make pictures without and "unnatural" things like plastic walls, ect.

One very important thing is light! A good light source is the alpha and omega for good photograph. I bought for this reason a special photo-lamp with "coldlight" (in German: Kaltlicht = means the light is not hot and you can to very near with the lamp) and natural color temperature.

The other important thing is the equipment - a good cam with a good macro is needful. I use the SONY DSC-F717 wich is one of the best semi-professional cams and very good for macro shots (the cam has the biggest lens aperture of 2.0 !!!).

Last but not least, you have to WANT make good photos and you have to take you time for them. I see here on arachnoboards thousand times bad and blur pictures with spiders on hands (where the focus is on the hand and not on the spider) - and many ppl say "OMG - what a great picture". For me those pictures arent worse to show and not worse to save! - Nobody is perfect but you can try to make a pic wich is as perfect as you think - and remember: Post only pictures that you would want to see from others !!! (Or do you want to see blur, dark and cuttet pics ?)

just my 2 cents....

 

[metallica]

Anyways - you mentioned that now you "take your spiders to the forest" instead of using the forest setup. How do the spiders react to being outside in that setting? How do you deal with spiders that are more nervous / jumpy / fast? Do you have someone that assists you in case of a problem or do you do it alone?

i don't have spiders that are vervous / jumpy. and speed is relative. in a small tank spiders look a lot faster then they are. once out in a wide open space they are easy to follow. i make all my pics alone.

Eddy

 

[FryLock]

i don't have spiders that are vervous / jumpy. and speed is relative. in a small tank spiders look a lot faster then they are. once out in a wide open space they are easy to follow. i make all my pics alone.

H.villosella sling in the woods not the best idea looking back

 

[Till]

I myself only own a Nikon Coolpix 4600. But even with this very cheap cam, bright daylight (a flash is not really bad, but it kinda gives you some new colours ), a cheap tripod (~10 Euros), an external tank especially for photographing, and using the self-auto-release of your cam (=no jiggling) good photos are not far away!

My brother, on the other hand, owns a Nikon D70. With this cam, 2 external flashes a tripod and a Macro-Objective it is kind of...well...amazing

I don't like that the small cameras are missing the "Tiefenunschärfe" (german)
I didn't find any translation for "Tiefenunschärfe", but it has to be something along the lines of "depth-sharpness" or "depth-unsharpness".

 

[PinkLady]

Wolfy and I use a Fugifilm A200 finepix digital camera. We have a couple of different settings on it and there are pc programs that you can use that can clear up the picture from it being not too quite in focus. We also make sure our lighting is just so. We find that as long as it isn't too bright that usually works out well. We always use the home they live in also. We're not quite ready to take some of the lil meanies out..lol We've taken a couple over to the park for pics in the early evening and that's worked out well. I don't think the people at the park liked our choice of pets to bring over for a walk but oh well..lol

 

[Psoulocybe]

T. Raab, please cut the sony fanboi crap.

That camera is pretty nice... but it is not THE OMG HOly F#ing GRAIL of cameras.

Equipment means almost nothing Becca.


I'm really not kidding.

Especially for what you're talking about.

Now, the macro conversation, is a little.... different....

You can't produce decent macro shots w/o a SLR with a nice 100mm


becca, I paid about $175 for my camera.

check out http://psoulocybe.com and see what an untrained shmuck can do with a cheap camera....

Blows all the elitest responces right out of this thread.

Till, this german word.... are you talking about something that controlls the depth of field?

That is controlled by your F-stop (aperature)

You can google and find about a bazillion sites that will explain how using different aperature settings can change your depth of field.

 

[metallica]

Now, the macro conversation, is a little.... different....

You can't produce decent macro shots w/o a SLR with a nice 100mm

i don't have a SLR .... just my 3 yr old finepix 6900 zoom... looks like a good macro to me:

 

[Windchaser]

T. Raab, please cut the sony fanboi crap.

That camera is pretty nice... but it is not THE OMG HOly F#ing GRAIL of cameras.

Equipment means almost nothing Becca.


I'm really not kidding.

Especially for what you're talking about.

While I generally agree with you here, equipment does make a difference. You will never get a decent, or even a good, macro shot from something like a cell phone camera. Granted, you don't need a whole host of expensive equipment to take a good picture. The person behind the camera is the most important piece of "equipment." But, it does help to at least have something more than a disposable camera, cell phone camera or a really cheap point-and-shoot. This is especially true for macro work. With macro photography you really need a camera that allows you to manually set the aperture as well as a decent lens. Besides lighting, the other critical component of photography is the quality of the lens. With all that said, there are a number of fairly inexpensive ($200 to $450) digital cameras on the market that will allow someone to get good results.

Now, the macro conversation, is a little.... different....

You can't produce decent macro shots w/o a SLR with a nice 100mm


becca, I paid about $175 for my camera.

check out http://psoulocybe.com and see what an untrained shmuck can do with a cheap camera.....

Blows all the elitest responces right out of this thread.

You have some nice shots posted.

Till, this german word.... are you talking about something that controlls the depth of field?

That is controlled by your F-stop (aperature)

You can google and find about a bazillion sites that will explain how using different aperature settings can change your depth of field.

Yep, DOF can make a big difference in a macro shot. Just take a look at Metallica's picture above.

 

[becca81]

My biggest concern so far has been the lens that I use (and secondly the lighting). I had a Sony Mavica CD1000 SLR that I loved - but in a moment of hormonal stupidity during my last pregnancy I sold it and bought a Sony Cybershot (aka - piece of crap). The lens is small and the "macro mode" is a joke.

I'd like to find a lens that will pick up enough light even in lower-light settings without having to use the flash as much (or just use an external light source).

I also think I we have some lights in the garage that were used in a furniture store display that may help with the light issue.