Spider on Dandelion Flower.

[AlbertHurwood]

This was taken about a year ago in my back garden when we had had a few warm weeks.
I didn't realise it, but if you look closely at a dandelion flower you will see two types of insects, an ultra small insect which I believe is called a "thrip" and a tiny spider who preys on these thrips.
These spiders will stay absolutely still for many minutes until the thrip happens to go too close and then WHAM!
In a fraction of a second the spider grabs it!
This was one of about 100 I took and about the only one which is reasonable.
I used a Canon EOS 350d with the supplied lens and a +10 Dioptre close up lens.
You can just see one of the little insects it preys on at the right hand side about a quarter of the way up.
The little dots aren't blemishes on the pic but tiny grains of pollen.

[romelm]

I like this shot, especially the sharpness of the spider's eyes.

[AlbertHurwood]

That was the main difficulty.
The ultra shallow DOF meant that many of the ones I took just missed out on getting the eyes sharp.
And it made no difference whether I used AF or manual, just a fractional change in movement as I took it was enough to put it wildly out.

[swmdrayfan]

Unbelievably sharp! Nice capture.
John

[readingr]

What brand of diopter are you using - these are excellent.

Looks a tad oversharpened on my monitor. Bet it prints really well.

Roger

[lamorena]

Oh, lovely job capturing a fascinating subject..The flower, the spiders spiky leg hairs..the pollen..There is so much to look at...very dramatic, but cheerful because of that sharp-yellow/green

I can see what readingr means about perhaps a bit of oversharpening in the spider's fur and back leg.

[AlbertHurwood]

Dear readingr
Thanks for your comments.
In fact the close up lenses are very cheap ones which I got on Ebay, just as a try out before I bought a better macro lens.
They are made by fox, and the seller (mwieloch) is still selling them today.
They come as a set of four +1,2,4,and a macro at +10 for about £20.00+pp!
As I say I certainly didn't expect to be able to take the pics I have with them because of the extremely low price.
I am hoping sometime in the next few weeks to buy a Canon EF 100mm F2.8 Macro USM which I understand is an excellent lens.
I do understand what you say about oversharpening, but must admit I do like them the way they are, but obviously it's very difficult sometimes to get the balance just right.
I must thank everyone on here for their very kind comments, this is really a superb forum, and I look forward to posting many more pics on her.

[Herriot]

Wow, this is really impressive, will be really interested to see your results with the 100mm canon lens.

[mamajan]

Great shot. I love the spider's eyes. I believe he is a Wolf spider. They get quite large. I had one in my house one time that was about two inches long. Eeek.