The hedges round here are awash with garden spider webs. So awash that this one decided to take up residence at the top of our stairwell! Garden spider by Steve Higgins, on Flickr I suppose this means a lot more flies about for a while. As a matter of interest, does anyone know why orb-web spiders always position themselves head-down in their webs?
Araneus Diadematus is also known as the "garden spider". Strange, as I photographed this one indoors. Camera - Nikon D40 DSLR (tripod mounted). Lens - Sigma 70-300mm macro zoom. Speed - 1/500 sec at ISO 400. Aperture - F5.3.
I photographed this Orb Web spider in September 2010. I discovered that it had spun a web suspended from a clothes line. I ran indoors to fetch my DSLR. While I was doing so, there had been a brief shower which almost totally destroyed the web. But I still managed a shot featuring raindrops on the spider itself. Camera - NIkon D40 DSLR. Lens - 18-55mm. Macro setting used. The camera was hand-held.
As an aside, the results you get from your D40 (6.1MP!) and the ones I get from my D80 (all of 1oMP), suggest to me that pixel count is of less importance than the quality of the lenses you use. And talent, of course. But I'm not used to the Nikon menus yet and haven't found the talent-boost option yet... my pic. btw is from a Lumix LF1, set to macro mode and flash on.
orb spider by Eddie Conway, on Flickr Took this last year. The web was built on our wheelie bin, which is why it has a blue background.
Alternatively there are house spiders, particularly those that find their way into baths and sinks. Photographed in 2016 with a Nikon D40 DSLR. Lens - 18-55mm. Matrix metering with TTL flash. Setting - Close up. Speed 1/125 at ISO 200. Aperture F5.6. I entered this image into a club competition. The judge didn't like the background and he suggested that I should pick the spider up and place it somewhere else. I...DON'T...THINK...SO!
Some cracking pictures...but, in the words of Stan Freburg "Man, don't sing about spiders. I mean, like, I don't dig spiders..." As for picking them up...that's a big 'nope' from me. Cheers, Jeff
As I may have said before, I am intellectually in favour of spiders - they have their place in the natural food chain, keeping down the number of flies, and being food for other animals. But emotionally - anything with eight legs that never trips over them is obviously an evil genius of some sort. And why do they need eight eyes? They are obviously up to something!
IIRC it shared the same sensor as my D50 has and I've had some cracking shots with that using a decent lens. [/quote]And talent, of course. But I'm not used to the Nikon menus yet and haven't found the talent-boost option yet... .[/QUOTE] Don't bother, there isn't one, I've looked... They don't have it on Canons either - and you know how they love gimmicks...
I really liked the sensor on my Nikon D200 (same as D80 IIRC) it was a CCD as opposed to CMOS. When I am trawling my old pictures they still seem to have that magical quality about them, unless I was just a better photographer back then!!
Yeah, the D80 was the last model to use a CCD sensor, or one of them, at any rate, and I thought that might by why the colours seem better. However, reading up about it on various photo sites, it seems it's more likely to be the software that does the JPEG conversion that is responsible. I shall find out when I start using RAW with the D80.
A quick Google suggests it could be a Garden Orb-weaving spider (Eriophora sp.), though they are apparently nocturnal.
