Taiwan has some great critters: Trying out the new macro attachment

I'm pretty disapppointed with my new wide angle attachment (My New Wide Angle: Preliminary Assessment) but I absolutely love the macro attachment that forms its base. It is essentially a huge magnifying glass and produces fantastic shots when everything goes right. I took it up Trail 8 and Trail 7 in Ta-ken yesterday to see what kind of critters I could get to pose for me.



The first two shots here are actually of two different spiders of the same species that had webs next to each other in some underbrush along Trail 7 in Ta-ken. The first shot gives you some idea of the actual size of these beautifully colored monsters, about 5-6 cm. This second shot was made with the new macro attachment. The level of detail speaks for itself, although I was in an awkward position trying to shoot it, so there's a bit of camera shake.



Again, a gorgeous shot, especially the stuff on its legs.


Here's the same bee from another angle, blown up even more.


This guy I nabbed with the telephoto/macro combination, not the new attachment.


This spider is no more than 3 cm across and I have never been able to get a solid shot of them with the camera, a Fuji s5000, by itself. But the new macro did a sterling job. It also revealed another problem: with the camera alone, I do not get inside the critter's space and disturb it. But with the new lens, I can get a lot closer, resulting in shots of panicked animals running from my lens, like this one.


Another shot of the same species of spider, a common one.

Verdict: one reason I wanted to upgrade my camera was to get more macro. I have more macro now, so I think I will put off the upgrade for another year at least, as this camera does everything that I want it to do. Definitely my next acquisition is going to be a 2X teleconverter.

[Taiwan] [photography] [spiders]