How do you photograph your spiders?

[Psoulocybe]

sure... i was chastizing him.

whatever.

anyway.... i didn't think it's a decent example of a good photo. if you can't take criticizm... i really don't give a *#@4.

i used to do a lot of macro work w/ my old D20. The camera went belly up so I don't have anything tarantula related to show from it's glory days.

my point of jumping in this thread was so that people wouldn't be throwing biased opinions of gear at becca.

she asked a series of questions which have been answered a number of differnt ways.. and thats good.

seconds... take quotes out of context like that Raqua, very nice.

I'm bowing out now since this will just become a flame war, but becca, seiously consider hitting up a photography site like fredmiranda.com

there are a ton of great deals on used equipment and great reviews from professionals.

 

[Lateralus]

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

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

Hey Psoulocybe, firstly, doesn't this count as an elitist statement too?

Secondly, are you insinuating that if I handed my camera to someone without the necessary experience with Slrs, he or she would be able to take the same standard of photographs as mine? :?

I don't do macro. I don't have the equipment... the closest I can show to give you an idea what a cheap fuji does w/ a macro shot is this

As stated you don't do macro shots nor do you have the equipment. With that being said, I am assuming that you have almost no experience with macro photography and are basing your conjecture on pure hearsay.

With that being said, how can you make such a sweeping statement such as the former?

[Edit] I was replying and did not see your other post so please ignore what I said here.

Metallica, while being in focus, there are a lot of problems with that shot.

The color is awful and it's very noisy. When talking macro photography, poor equipment shows.

That is of course your prerogative, whatever happened to "a good / decent picture" being subjective?

Personally I do not like GoTerp's photographs; sorry bro! (I find the lighting too harsh, the details to be overly-sharp and the colours too saturated) This does not mean that it might not appeal to others, nor would it also mean that he doesn't take good photographs.

Since we are talking about the technicalities now, here's a photo I just took using my Nikon D70 with a Nikkor 60mm lens at 1600 iso, large aperture size with an inaccurate white balance setting and grossly compressed to illustrate my point:

Sure, it might not have the barrel distortion of Eddy's photo, but the colour is way off, the depth of field horrible and the noise levels awful.

Does that necessarily mean that I am using an El Cheapo compact? Besides, the colour and noise levels of Eddy's photograph can be easily rectified with Photoshop.


The point that I am trying to make is that at the end of the day; your perception of the standard of someone's photography (macro or not), is directly tied to what the photographer wishes to show and his or her skill level, with little basis placed on the standard and quality of the photographer’s equipment.

I could easily buy myself a 12 Mp Prosumer Compact, take a photo of a tarantula at full resolution, crop it down and tweak it in Adobe Photoshop, and still get “macro” results close to that of a Dslr.

While I do agree with you to a certain extent, about the standard of someone’s equipment not being directly linked to the standard of photography one can produce. I feel that you shouldn’t be so quick to alienate the macro capabilities of a decent compact, when used by someone with the necessary level of expertise.

Just my 0.02 cents.

Cheers,
Damien.

 

[metallica]

Sure, it might not have the barrel distortion of Eddy's photo, but the colour is way off, the depth of field horrible and the noise levels awful.

Does that necessarily mean that I am using an El Cheapo compact? Besides, the colour and noise levels of Eddy's photograph can be easily rectified with Photoshop.

Damien.

Hi Damien,

correct, there was no filter on this pic, but look at the function of the photo... a clear shot of the claw of a T. straight from the cam, only resized, not croped. remember, this thing is only a mm long!

 

[cacoseraph]

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

i noticed you said to use a close up lens in your thread. i think i stumbled onto something similar to this. i just hold a large regular magnifying glass between the camera and the bug. i have gotten decent pics with a rubbish ~1.5MP digicam w/o a macro setting this way. also, this let me completely avoid using the digital zoom, which at least with cheap cameras, seems to hurt more than help. everything gets blurry fast if you shake, but for the money it's a good trick

 

[Lateralus]

Hi Damien,

correct, there was no filter on this pic, but look at the function of the photo... a clear shot of the claw of a T. straight from the cam, only resized, not croped. remember, this thing is only a mm long!

Hi Eddy,

I perfectly understood what you meant. The comments I made asides from the lens barrel distortion were directed towards the picture I took.

The lens distortion I was referring to; can be clearly seen from the immediate edges of your picture, even the part that was in focus. This is a problem that plagues pictures taken with the lens found on most compacts especially in macro mode.

Cheers,
Damien.

 

[GoTerps]

Personally I do not like GoTerp's photographs; sorry bro! (I find the lighting too harsh, the details to be overly-sharp and the colours too saturated) This does not mean that it might not appeal to others, nor would it also mean that he doesn't take good photographs

That's fine man! I'm no photographer, nor do I wish to be. I just like to show my spiders! It's the best I can do with a 5yr old cam that was only a couple hundred bucks 5yrs ago. I only use the built in flash, so lighting is usually to harsh. Although there are many spiders that I like the way a lot of flash looks on them.

I'm a spider keeper who takes some pictures, not a photographer who keeps spiders