Tag Archives: salticid

Jumping Spider Habronattus cuspidatus revisited.

By Adrian | Published 13 February, 2013

Reviewing earlier images, I came across this Habronattus cuspidatus photo, taken in Dinosaur Provincial Park last year. Perky, ain’t he, with the green legs and golden knees?

Habronattus cuspidatus, Jumping spider from Dinosaur Provincial Park

Posted in Alberta, Arachnid, Canada, Dinosaur Provincial Park, macro, photography, Portrait, Prairie, Provincial Park, Salticidae, Season, Spring, White Studio | Also tagged Canada, Dinosaur Provincial Park, Jumping spider Leave a comment

Finger Spider and the Twin Suns Dilemma

By Adrian | Published 31 January, 2013

I was scrolling through my wife’s photographs and came across this image that she took last May.

MP-E65mm flash in the field. Two Stofen diffusers plus foam sheet.

We were at the Opal Natural Area that day, but couldn’t remember what I was photographing at the time, so I looked through my own collection and found the photo of this little hopping Salticid. Judging by the lack of shots, he didn’t hang around long for a better portrait!

This Habronattus doesn’t care how many flashes I use, they’re all annoying…

No, that’s not a freshly uprooted carrot – that’s my finger, looking a bit grimy after a morning scratching in the undergrowth. And look at the spider eyes — twin catch-lights, which is unnatural and annoying. I could have cloned these out, but it is an example of the problem that comes with using twin-flash units like the Canon MT-24EX macro flash or the Nikon R1 flash system. In normal outdoor situations, eyes have one catch-light, and that is from the sun or the sky. Using twin-flashes, even when well diffused, creates two. Now the original reason for using twin flashes is so that, by controlling the output of each flash, you can obtain a modeling effect — subtle nuances of light and shade. Yet, if you want to avoid the twin hi-light problem caused by twin flashes, you must make them them behave like a single flash… !

What do you think of twin hi-lights in the eyes? Do you live with it? Do you clone one hi-light out? Or have you chucked your twin-flashes and gone back to a single flash system?

Posted in Alberta, Arachnid, Araneae, Camera, Canada, Canon, Equipment, Flash, Lenses, macro, MP-E65, Natural Area, Opal Natural Area, photography, Salticidae, Spring | Also tagged Flash, Jumping spider, macrophotography, Nikon, photograph, spider, Twin 3 Comments

Darlington’s Peacock Jumping Spider

By Adrian | Published 5 December, 2012

Another very cool jumping spider video by Jürgen Otto in Australia:

from the Youtube page:

Courtship of a spider that has become known as “Darlington’s peacock spider”. I found these specimens during a trip to the Stirling Range in September 2011. This species does not yet have a scientific name and is not yet formally described, but you can download an informal description that myself and David Hill produced here (may take a couple of minutes) http://peckhamia.com/peckhamia/PECKHAMIA_101.1.pdf

Visit Peacokspiderman‘s channel on YouTube for more.

And, hopefully, this will be a good warm-up to an upcoming video on Jumping Spider Melodies…stay tuned!

Posted in Arachnid, Araneae, Behaviour, Salticidae, Video | Also tagged Arthropoda, Australia, Biology, Darlington, Flora and Fauna, Jumping spider, Stirling Range, YouTube 1 Comment

Salticid Spider Exploited

By Adrian D. Thysse | Published 22 August, 2009

(Extracted – and adapted – from my blog Voyages Around My Camera)

One of the first results from my earliest ‘white field’ experiments, as inspired by the brilliant ant photography of Alex Wild of the blog Myrmecos. This is a small Salticid, or Jumping spider, and he was photographed in my (Patent Pending) ‘O-pake S’ladBowl’ Diffuser. I failed to take exact notes at the time, but I believe this was taken with a 28mm Zuiko wide-angle lens reverse mounted on a Tamron 90mm macro lens with the Kenko Pro 1.4x tele-extender. This gives approx. (90/28 x 1.4 ) 4.5X magnification. But I could be wrong.

Don’t pay any attention to the spidery script (for some reason, called ‘Jokerman’), which merely indicates that I am shamelessly exploiting this spider to link to my other blog. To make the spider jump, go to the sidebar, find the spider and click on the… left anterior median eye? Nothing to it.

Go on, don’t be scared…