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Home > TME Community > Share Your Work > Macro > Eye of the Spider
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Eye of the Spider
Started August 11, 2009 @ 3:35pm by Baassie
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Baassie
Posts: 63 |
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| Eye of the Spider | August 11, 2009 @ 3:35pm | A few shots of a very small spider in its web waiting for dinner. Patience finally paid off. For me too btw; the wind was driving me crazy! 
I shot them and uploaded them just now. No post-production whatsoever.
Hope you enjoy them! C&Cs are more than welcome if you feel up to it. 
Sebastiaan, Amsterdam |
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Wes
Posts: 8,139 |
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| August 11, 2009 @ 4:14pm | Very nice, Baasie. Looks like it succeeded in getting dinner.
Wes |
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Flo
Posts: 15,844 |
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| August 11, 2009 @ 6:32pm | I'm happy the spider managed to catch its meal. How different each image looks! Just a slight change in POV and the whole colors and feeling of the image changes. You did well after patiently outwaiting the wind.
Flo - PPY
"May we live in peace without weeping. May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing. And may our love fill the world, angel wings beating." aziza
http://photos.tonebytone.com |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| August 11, 2009 @ 11:37pm | Courageous decision to post without any post-processing--but that is where the magic starts with tiny subjects. I took the liberty of taking 2 of the pictures above, which are low-res jpegs as posted here, and I ran them through Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). The only adjustment I made was to sharpen them, using these settings: Amount=50, Radius=1.3, Detail=25 (default value), Masking=50. Even on these jpegs, the results were dramatic.
You've got some really good shots here, and I think you'll be very pleased with your results when you go back and rework them a bit. By the way, after sharpening I could see that this one is a boy!
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Baassie
Posts: 63 |
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| August 12, 2009 @ 5:17am | Thank you so much for the nice comments, and a very special thank you to RickT for the hard work. I have to be honest in that I'm a real amateur in both photography and even more so in post-processing. It's all pretty much new to me and I really need to take the time to educate myself (unfortunately, I don't have too much time  ).
When I went to Southern Africa last year I shot everything in RAW + SHQ JPEG. You can imagine the amount of data my poor discs had to bear and the waiting time to just put them on there! So I went back to only JPEG, also because I wasn't doing much with the RAWs. Seeing these dramatic results on these low-res JPEGs makes me change my mind completely!!!
What do you guys shoot in? Only RAW or JPEG, or both of them?
Are there 'sort of' standard ranges of values for the amount of sharpening, radius, detail and masking that work nicely for close-up/macro shots?
Thank you for educating me and giving me new inspiration, RickT!
PS. I'm at the office right now and my collegues and I really had to laugh about the 'this one is a boy' comment. One made the comment 'is he talking about the spider or the fly?', but seriously... how can you tell? I'd really like to know!
Sebastiaan, Amsterdam |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| August 12, 2009 @ 9:32am | Baassie, the short answer to your question is "pedipalps". But that leads to a longer answer. Everyone is familiar with spiders having 8 legs. At the front of the body, usually held in front of the head, are 2 more leg-like appendages that aren't used for walking. They are named pedipalps because they seem like a spare pair of feet used only to touch things. On female spiders the pedipalps taper continuously to their ends. On male spiders there is a bulb at the end that looks like a mitten. That bulb is used more or less as a shopping bag where the chap totes around his sperm until circumstances permit him to deposit it in a compatible female. Now you, too, can impress the crowd by simply eyeballing a spider and authoritatively stating "male" or "female".
There's no particular rule of thumb for sharpening values that I know of. If you have Photoshop and its included ACR feature, you will find what works for your camera most of the time, with higher or lower values as the subject dictates. I find that it's best to play first with the radius and amount values. Then move on to the masking value. I usually find, for my camera, that "details" doesn't do much positive.
I think you'll find that most people here shoot only RAW because of the great flexibility it gives you to make adjustments afterward. JPEG saves space on your memory card, but then you need to worry about white balance when shooting, and image degradation from the compression algorithm. The only reason I kept saying "low-res jpeg" was because the image I stole was 800x600 pixels and I got pretty good results. You should do even better with the original file--it may not require nearly as much sharpening.
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Flo
Posts: 15,844 |
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| August 12, 2009 @ 10:31am | So determining spiders' sex is pedipalpable? I just made up a new word, according to my spellchecker, lol. So the males have a purse in which to carry their "family jewels"? I find this extremely humorous this morning! 
Rick, I like what you did with those two images.
Flo - PPY
"May we live in peace without weeping. May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing. And may our love fill the world, angel wings beating." aziza
http://photos.tonebytone.com |
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Baassie
Posts: 63 |
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| August 12, 2009 @ 10:58am | Thanks for the biology lesson, RickT. I don't think I've had many moments in my life before where I had the opportunity to impress a crowd with a spider present, but I'll definitely keep all this in mind if that moment would arrive. 
I have Photoshop Elements 7 and whenever I open a RAW image a special screen automatically pops up (probably ACR, giving me the different features you mention, after which I can open the altered image in PE7 itself. I haven't figured out how to open this manually when the image is in JPEG, like you've done with my 2 low-res JPEGs.
I'll have to practice a little with the different features to understand what happens in ACR. I'll definitely give these images a shot.
Just one more quick question. I'm considering shooting in both RAW and JPEG simultaneously, because I'm worried I'll have to convert all my RAWs to JPEGs for easy sharing. Is there a way this can be done for multiple RAWs at once within Photoshop Elements 7?
Sebastiaan, Amsterdam |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| August 12, 2009 @ 11:23am | I don't have Elements, but assuming Adobe didn't lobotomize ACR when packaged with Elements, you should be able to group select all the raw images you want to convert (from Elements), right-click on one of the selected ones and pick "Open in Camera Raw..." or something similar. Once in ACR, all the selected images should be displayed down the left margin, with the first one selected. Left-click on the button above them that says "Select All". The "Synchronize" button will then quit being grayed-out. If you are going to make any adjustments (brightness, sharpening, etc.) make sure that its category is checked within the Synchronize menu. Make the adjustments to the displayed first picture. When you then click on the "Save Image..." button, you can then choose jpg as the format (rather than psd or dng or tif), and all will be saved as jpg.
If any Elements user reads this and knows that I just gave you bogus info, I hope they'll correct it.
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Last Edit: August 12, 2009 @ 11:24am by RickT | |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| August 12, 2009 @ 11:29am | Good one, Flo. Just like in Hamlet, "a palpable hit." It gets more complicated, with the "mittens" actually having a rather complex geometry that fits an equally convoluted female structure in a lock-and-key relationship. Not the time and place here, where our minds should be on the higher aspects of our art.
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Baassie
Posts: 63 |
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| August 18, 2009 @ 6:03am | Here are the two shots RickT chose to post-process, with the same sharpening settings as he used in ACR, but now on the original JPEGs. I really do like the results. I'll post the other shots as well a little later.
Thanks again, RickT!
Sebastiaan, Amsterdam |
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gaelldew
Posts: 294 |
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| August 18, 2009 @ 12:31pm | Baassie, I hope you dont mind someone else poking their nose in but I took the liberty of adding some fill light and reducing contrast with ACR. The original perhaps could have done with some fill in flash but this shows how you can improve with PP. I know what you mean about the wind tried for ages yesterday to get a moth sleeping on a hanging basket.
Here in the U.K.
http://gaelldew.zenfolio.com/ |
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Baassie
Posts: 63 |
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| August 18, 2009 @ 3:51pm | Thank you so much, Garth. I really appreciate you trying to show me what's possible. Up until now I've used the 'Auto' function of ACR just to see which settings change, why and what the result is. Sometimes, nothing much changes, but most of the time I did like the results. But I should use it more as a learning tool and start thinking and tinkering with the settings myself. For instance, I used the auto function here and never thought of getting some fill in flash in there (let alone think about it at the time I was making the shot, but I'll blame the wind for that ).
So again, Garth, thank you very much for this!
Sebastiaan, Amsterdam |
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gaelldew
Posts: 294 |
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| August 19, 2009 @ 5:43am | Thanks Baassie, glad to help in a small way, just keep asking the questions I'm sure everyone will try to help.
Here in the U.K.
http://gaelldew.zenfolio.com/ |
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Community Assignment #53
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Have you heard about the Backyard Shots Photography Guide "Street Portraiture with CraigTanner"?
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