The fishing spider catches a fish!

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MarkSturtevant
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The fishing spider catches a fish!

Post by MarkSturtevant »

I have been recently showing staged pictures of the six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton). This spider prefers to stay out on water, and I had recently shown here that they will go under water to escape danger. Their prey includes small fish, and here I manage to show that. I am fairly surprised that this worked!

First, here is the spider once again. When just hanging out, they will frequently clean their feet. All 8 of them. I watched this from above and from below many times.
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I had set up this spider in an aquarium with shallow water. The aquarium had a glass bottom, so I could set it up in my yard and lie underneath to photograph the spider from below. For over a year I had this 'vision' to take just this picture, and so it was very exciting to make it happen!
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I had stocked the aquarium with a few minnows, and settled myself underneath it to see what might happen. Fishing spiders will dangle their feet out to "feel" for prey under water. I had read that they will also dabble their feet to lure in fish, although I never saw this.
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At this point, I was freaking out!
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The actual capture was very fast, and I did not quite get it. What happened was that the spider lunged and used its legs to quickly gather the fish toward it. These were taken immediately after.
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Here she is again on top. She would twirl the fish round and round in her pedipalps, and work in the venom. It was pretty amazing to see the fish was pretty well liquefied over a period of just a few minutes.
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That's all, folks!
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Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

grgh
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Post by grgh »

Well done on the patience and the reward.

lovely to see such a capture, good clean shots and very descriptive.
used to do astronomy.
and photography.
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Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

Wow, amazing work! Congratulations. Often these kinds of grand plans and efforts don't worik out; great to see that this time it did!

A good way to capture things like this, flying dragonflies, etc, is to use a camera that has pre-bursts. You hold the shutter button down when you sense action will begin, and keep holding it down until the event happens, when you stop holding it down. The camera cosntantly fills its buffer at about 60 frames per second and cycles out the older frames, saving the last sixty frames. One or two of those sixty frames will be the perfect shot of the action.

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

Lou Jost wrote:Wow, amazing work! Congratulations. Often these kinds of grand plans and efforts don't worik out; great to see that this time it did!

A good way to capture things like this, flying dragonflies, etc, is to use a camera that has pre-bursts. You hold the shutter button down when you sense action will begin, and keep holding it down until the event happens, when you stop holding it down. The camera cosntantly fills its buffer at about 60 frames per second and cycles out the older frames, saving the last sixty frames. One or two of those sixty frames will be the perfect shot of the action.
I would have 'burst mode', or 'continuous shooting'. As far as I have seen, the burst happens when you hold down the shutter button, not when you release it. There would also be the option of simply shooting a short video during an action scene. But I would guess there would be considerable motion blur from that.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

David Sykes
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Post by David Sykes »

Even easier than preburst is postburst.
That is what I use on my Sony RX10 Mk IV for photographing dragonflies.
Just press the button AFTER the action.

David

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

"postburst" or its equivalent is what I was talking about. The camera takes pictures continuously but doesn't write them to the card from the buffer until you act (eithrr releasing or pressing the shutter). The buffer fills after about 60 frames so you get a one-second look into the past.

abpho
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Post by abpho »

Spectacular work. The final few images are spectacular. Thank you.
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MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

I don't have fancy recent model camera bodies. My heavy hitter camera is a Canon 5d mark iii, which is an old full frame. I doubt I can do the tricks suggested other than just 'continuous shooting' when pressing the shutter.

Thank you, abpho (and everyone). Those last pictures were taken through aquarium glass, and it was not terribly clean after some hours steaming in the sun and having a spider run up and down it a few times. The original frames of the spider munching the fish were definitely foggy. This was cleaned up pretty well with the de-haze tool in Photoshop Elements.
The pictures from beneath are even more processed since I kept a screen lid on top of the aquarium -- this to keep the big spider from climbing out when right above me. So the screen had to be removed in post.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

pierre
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Post by pierre »

Dear Mark,

Nice & instructive !

I master piece of work...as always :)

Thank you for sharing.
Regards

Pierre

abpho
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Post by abpho »

MarkSturtevant wrote:My heavy hitter camera is a Canon 5d mark iii, which is an old full frame.
I was sad when I read that the 5D3 is an old FF camera. LOL.

As for the rest of your comment. The journey isn't important. What matters is that you ended up with some killer images.
I'm in Canada! Isn't that weird?

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Post by Troels »

Fantastic sequence!
Troels Holm, biologist (retired), environmentalist, amateur photographer.
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MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

Just came across this sequence that shows the spider taking a fish. A bit heavy on sensationalism, but still interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CktmhnWnSJI
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

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