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shane shacaluga
03-24-2013, 12:39 PM
The weather has been appalling this weekend so i decided to try for some macro action instead of birds

Here is a beautiful little jumping spider i managed to find

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8104/8585679099_0b93bdbfec_b.jpg

D7000
70=300 VR with Raynox 250 macro adapter
145mm
f18
1/100 SS
iso 125

Homemade macro diffusor mounted on the cameras inbuilt flash

Removed some flash lights from the forehead and front legs, and toned down some bright areas in background
removed a distracting rock from bottom right

Comments and critiques welcome ;)

Randy Stout
03-24-2013, 12:55 PM
SHANE:

The eyes look great, although the catchlight is a bit unusual (from your flash set for sure) and overall the flash use is subtle.

Well exposed. The area where the rock was removed looks a bit different re: degree of depth of field compared with the area on left. Probably wouldn't jump out as much if you hadn't mentioned the removal, so I was studying that area!

But thanks for the disclosure!

Overall I like it. Will have to try my hand at spiders!

Cheers

Randy

PS: What is your working distance with this setup?

shane shacaluga
03-24-2013, 01:01 PM
Thanks Randy, this setup lets me work from a nice distance so as to not startle the small spiders

I had a 105 micro lens which I sold as it got nowhere near the magnification this current setup gets me. Best of all is the more you magnify by zooming, the further away you need to get. It was the opposite on the 105 and small spiders like these required massive crops

The flash has a big dome that peers over the front of the lens so thats why the big shine in the eyes

The Raynox 250 is too powerful at 70mm to get big insects like butterflies etc but for getting the compound eyes on flies etc its very good, and cheap

Thanks for your comments.

Jerry van Dijk
03-24-2013, 03:21 PM
Hi Shane, your setup works very well! I like the details on the spider and the pleasing color of the BG. The cloned area does look a bit conspicuous, also because of the repeating pattern and two slight mistakes along the bottom of the frame. I'd like to see a closer crop, with a little cropped from bottom and right.

shane shacaluga
03-24-2013, 03:33 PM
Thanks. I will redo the crop a bit later and post it below.

Steve Maxson
03-25-2013, 11:44 AM
Hi Shane. Your flash worked well and you have good sharpness within your DOF which is centered on the eyes. The eyes of jumping spiders are like tiny mirrors so you can always tell what kind of flash diffusion folks are using. :S3: The repeating patterns in the cloned area in the lower right are pretty obvious once you start looking for them. A little touch up cloning would easily break up those patterns. I like Jerry's idea of cropping a bit off the bottom and some from the right - this will help to focus more of our attention on the spider itself. You have a very nice image to work with and a couple tweaks will make it even better!

Jonathan Ashton
03-25-2013, 11:45 AM
Well done I like the DOF and the image is sharp. I would recrop to remove some of the bottom right other than that I think it is a very good image, the exposure is very good and the flash is effectiev.

shane shacaluga
03-25-2013, 07:08 PM
Here is the repost cropping a little more and tried to fix the cloned out area bottom right

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8517/8591246042_bf5670c1e3_b.jpg

Allen Sparks
03-25-2013, 07:53 PM
Hi Shane,
I really like the repost with the bottom structure coming down in a 'V' where the spider's head is. Nice flash work and sharpness.

Allen

shane shacaluga
03-26-2013, 01:11 AM
Thanks ;)

Steve Maxson
03-26-2013, 09:36 AM
The repost is a big improvement! My attention goes right to those "big" eyes.

Dave Johnson
03-26-2013, 09:49 AM
The repost is super Shane and focuses much more attention to the spider in particular those eyes. Great shot!

shane shacaluga
03-26-2013, 09:55 AM
Thanks for the comments guys!

Jerry van Dijk
03-26-2013, 02:32 PM
Hi Shane, composition in the repost works good for me! There still is some obvious repetition in the cloned area. A good trick to solve this (because sometimes you just can't get any place else from the image to clone from) is when you've finished cloning, choose a large brush point for the clone tool (about the size of the total cloned area, or a bit smaller), set a low value for opacity and clone over the whole area once or twice. You'll probably need some trial and error to find the right amount of opacity to hide your cloning tracks and still have a natural effect.

shane shacaluga
03-26-2013, 06:33 PM
Thanks for that. Will try it and see.

Roman Kurywczak
03-30-2013, 02:38 PM
Hey Shane,
late to the party...but repost nails it for me! I generally like more dof.....but in this case you nailed the focus where it had to be!

shane shacaluga
03-30-2013, 03:27 PM
Thanks