Long jaws

Images taken in a controlled environment or with a posed subject. All subject types.

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MarkSturtevant
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Long jaws

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Long-jawed orb weavers used to scare the hell out of me as a kid. These gangly spiders hang out in large numbers along river banks, and there they are frequent drop-ins to anyone passing near the shore in a canoe or inner-tube on a lazy summer day. Their freakishly big fangs will trigger arachnophobia in just about anyone, and that summarizes my first encounters with them.
But now I understand they are as benign as ladybugs. They get their large jaws because that is what they use as claspers during mating. They have 0 inclination to bite.
This spider (I suspect Tetragnatha elongata) was retrieved from a nearby river, and photographed in a staged session on the dining room table. They are quite flighty in two senses. First, they want to run away from everything, so it takes time to let one settle down. Second, they are extraordinarily skilled at flying away by ballooning out a dragline from on top of a perch, and letting the webbing float away by the slightest of breezes. When the invisible web latches onto a perch several feet away, they immediately plant down the other end at their feet, and off they will fly, moving with surprising speed thru the air along the dragline. One must them sweep them up and plant them back on the perch to try try again for more pictures. Patience and a sense of humor helps when working with these interesting spiders.
This picture is a result of focus stacking by hand with the Venus/Laowa 2.5-5x lens, Zerene Stacker, followed by Topaz Sharpen AI. The hand-held stacking and the sharpening program produces various artifacts, and these required cleaning up Gimp. In there, different pictures were combined through layer masks, and lots of cutting and pasting, cloning, healing, and several other tools were put to use. Pretty much my whole bag of post-processing tricks went into this picture, and yet I don't consider it completely done.
ImageLong-jawed orb weaver by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

I wonder what might be the best way to do quick focus stacking by hand with a manual lens? I am not looking for a lot of frames, maybe 6 or so at a time. My go-to method is to move the camera, but the parallax shifts mean more work in post. There was a mention in a different thread that one of those follow-focus devices might be useful, but I am open to ideas.
In any case, thanks for looking!
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Oldbear67
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Re: Long jaws

Post by Oldbear67 »

Those long jaws are also used to snatch insects such as mosquitoes, sort of like preying mantis legs.

They have no leverage and are incapable of penetrating skin, I have caught many hundreds by hand; convienently their legs don't shed when caught.

Nice image.

Marcepstein
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Re: Long jaws

Post by Marcepstein »

Thats interesting about the spider and the image color and details are very nice.

Lou Jost
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Re: Long jaws

Post by Lou Jost »

There was a mention in a different thread that one of those follow-focus devices might be useful, but I am open to ideas.
I use that for studio work, but it really is not easy (for me impossible) handheld.

And of course it would not work on your Laowa, which has no focus ring.

In the field I use automatic focus bracketing and a camera that is held still. This works very well for shallow stacks, until the buffer is filled and things slow down.

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Long jaws

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Lou Jost wrote:
Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:15 am
There was a mention in a different thread that one of those follow-focus devices might be useful, but I am open to ideas.
I use that for studio work, but it really is not easy (for me impossible) handheld.
And of course it would not work on your Laowa, which has no focus ring.
In the field I use automatic focus bracketing and a camera that is held still. This works very well for shallow stacks, until the buffer is filled and things slow down.
Thank you. I often also rest the camera on a monopod or brace it firmly against something. If the subject is down on the table top I can rest the camera on a stack of magazines. The slick paper slides with very little resistance. But nudging the camera forward or backward at such close range means there are commonly changes in parallax between things in the immediate foreground and background. I try to minimize that by placing the viewfinder center reticle at the same point for each picture, but there are still shifts.
Correct of course by the focus ring. I was wanting to try the zoom ring as a focus ring, since turning that changes mag but also creates a different focal point. So i was hoping that would work as a focus ring.
Another notion I've considered is to mount the camera loosely on an Arca Swiss rail that is a few inches long, and move it by slight nudges along the rail. Its a kludge, but so is what I am doing now.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Lou Jost
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Re: Long jaws

Post by Lou Jost »

I was wanting to try the zoom ring as a focus ring, since turning that changes mag but also creates a different focal point. So i was hoping that would work as a focus ring.
That lens extends greatly during zooming, so I think this would give you more problems, right?

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Long jaws

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Lou Jost wrote:
Tue Dec 20, 2022 4:58 pm
I was wanting to try the zoom ring as a focus ring, since turning that changes mag but also creates a different focal point. So i was hoping that would work as a focus ring.
That lens extends greatly during zooming, so I think this would give you more problems, right?
It costs nothing to try, but your point means I shouldn't expect much.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Ramos Kenneth D
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Re: Long jaws

Post by Ramos Kenneth D »

Well, I don't don't know about the technical aspects of this photograph but it does raise some questions as to evolution and natural selection in regards to that mouthful of fangs. :-k

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