sford122 Loc: Amarillo TX

I finally feel like I'm making progress. I found this little guy on the patio and nearly stepped on him. He jumped over to our black welcome mat and posed nicely for me. All I could hear in my head was Tinusbum saying, "Be patient, get squared, and focus on the eyes." I laid flat on my stomach and shot a lot of pics and these are my best. Thanks so much Tom for being such an inspiration. I'm going to be sore all over tomorrow from laying on concrete with tensed muscles for so long, but it is worth it!

Each black plastic fiber on the mat is 2mm wide. The jumper is almost 3mm long (body only).

Edit P.S.
Shoot. These don't look as good posted here as I thought they did on my monitor. I still think it shows some improvement for me. Quote mentor Douglass, "Practice, Practice, Practice"... still.

Shown at 1:1 ratio


Shown at 1:1 ratio


Tightly Cropped


On concrete, to show markings on back

steenowitz

That's your welcome Mat! These are awesome!

sford122 Loc: Amarillo TX

Thanks Steenowitz! Yep. This is my mat. Now I'm afraid to step out the back door not knowing how many of these little critters I might be stepping on. I took this shot with a Point & Shoot camera and I'm zooming in on it trying to find him. I think I am showing signs of an obsession with jumpers now. :)

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Another Hentz Jumper, we have to get you closer, you are a little front focused on a couple of your shots as the mat material is in better focus than the spider is... I only tell you this to try and help. Your lens on a full set of tubes should give you 1.7X magnification and I know that your lens is an exceptional lens... so get closer and make sure that you are manually focused to 1:1 and then just move your camera in and out to focus the shot. Don't be afraid to brace your hand on the ground or a fence post to steady the shot and help you to maintain focus.

If you are not doing so already, set your camera to manual settings, I usually set my ISO at 100 to 160 ISO because it greatly improves your ability to sharpen in post processing, I will set the aperture at something like f/16 or f/22 and then before even going outside I will find something in the house to shoot so that I can adjust my flash setting. I always shoot with manual flash settings and reduced power, I have the speedlight set for a wide angle coverage, so that the light spreads on the diffuser, and I usually will take a couple of test shots of something like an eraser head on a pencil or a fake flower that is consistent in color to what I expect to shoot outside so that I can evaluate my settings. I then adjust the manual flash setting for the proper exposure. Once in the field it is rare that I would have to change settings as long as I am shooting at or near the point where the lens is focused 1:1.

I hope that you don't mind my sharing with you, but you are finding a lot of great jumping spiders and I want to see some great pics coming from you.

tinusbum Loc: east texas

nice shots,it sure is nice to know i'm not the only one obsessed with macro. another one bites the dust :-) i'm on my knee's alot and belly too.after an hour or so i have a hard time getting up too

sford122 Loc: Amarillo TX

I don't mind at all Geff; I greatly appreciate your efforts to help me. My gut tells me there is something I am doing wrong I just can't figure out what it is. Here is what I do:
I added the 36mm extension tube only (not using the 20mm or 12mm). I attached it to the camera, then attached my macro lens to the extension tube (per Canon's guidelines). Camera is set to manual and I used 1/200 sec TV, f/16 AV, and 200 ISO. Flash is set to manual, M Zoom, and shows 14mm (which is the wide setting). I also have my flash's built-in wide-angle diffuser flipped down and am using a fotodiox 6"x8" diffuser with a paper towel on the front of it. I do set my lens to 1:1 ratio and move in and out. I never take it off the 1:1, only focus by what I see (which I thought at first was probably my big problem, next to being a little shaky). I use the manual select: spot AF setting (square box with dot in center) to focus. I try to place the dot on the spider's eyes and when they look their sharpest, I take the picture. I was on my stomach taking these pictures and had the ground to completely brace my hand/arms on and what I saw in the viewfinder was the best I've seen so far. My camera even beeped and flashed in the viewfinder confirming focus. I did use 1/1 full power on my flash, since I was in the shade under a patio cover and the sun was already low in the sky and our yard was in the shade already too.

Okay. I'm an idiot. What I have above is how I set up my camera and what I normally do. Everything is correct for what I did except my f/stop and ISO were set wrong, because I didn't reset it from some earlier shots I took. These were actually taken using f/20 and ISO 400 (which I never use for macro. My bad. Your recommendation for doing pre-shooting test shots indoors first is a winner. I need to do this. Besides these wrong settings though, even on pictures I've posted with the correct settings (f/16 and 200 ISO) I still seem to have the same problems. I'm concentrating so hard on the spider's eyes I never even notice the rest of the subject in the viewfinder. I don't think it is the camera, I would be front focused when I first had a Canon T3 too. The only other thing I can think to throw in is that I wear glasses. Again, I would blame it totally on my eyes except that the camera is confirming focus for me (sometimes, not all of the time). What do you think about all of this?

sford122 Loc: Amarillo TX

Thanks. I guess it is true, misery does enjoy company. I feel and share your pain!

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Well it sounds like you are already doing almost everything that I suggested, maybe the spider is even smaller than I what I assumed he is. I know that these guys are small, actually probably one of the smaller species that I have encountered. Stick with it it will come with time. If you do find yourself with extra time and want a project try to build a home made diffuser, I am not so sure how effective it is to place paper towel over a retail diffuser, it would seem to me that you may be blocking too much light. The lower the power setting on your flash that still produces adequate light for the exposure the sharper your image will be. The lower the flash setting the better your flash will freeze motion.

As far as the wearing glasses thing, I use reading glasses as do most people as we crossover into our 50's. That is the reason for my moniker "Blurryeyed" because were it not for reading glasses I would never be able to read a book. Luckily I found the diopter on the camera's viewfinder and was able to adjust the viewfinder to match my failing eyesight. It is generally a little dial right next to the view finder and unless your glasses are really strong you should be able to adjust the view finder so that you can focus the camera without using your glasses.

Thanks for accepting my advice as generously as you did, it would seem that I did not tell you much that you have not already learned.

sford122 Loc: Amarillo TX

I have to keep practicing and learning though. Your input means more to me than you know. If I can take-away just one more good piece of advice each time, it adds up to a lot of help. I bet I don't forget to check all of my settings from now on (or not often anyway). That was embarrassing to have to admit.

I am familiar with the diopter and have previously adjusted my glasses with it. It's been a long time ago though, so I'm going to do that again too.

I did make a homemade diffuser and had been using it until just a couple of weeks ago when I got the Fotodiox. Sometimes I do use 1/4 to 1/2 power on the flash, depending on the situation. I'm having better luck with the Fotodiox than I did with my own. I do think I'll take the paper towel back off. I've only tried using it this past week and that's when I found myself having to use full flash power sometimes in the shade.

This jumper is the smallest I've seen. I only found him by accident while looking for another jumper I saw just prior to running into the house for my camera. This one was less than half as big as the one I was looking for... tiny.

Please continue to give me any advice you have to offer. I appreciate it.

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

Your speedlight/fotodiox set-up is similar to mine. The closer the softbox face to your subject, the less power needed.

I have astigmatism, which is not correctable with the camera eyepiece diopter adjustment, so I am happiest with A-F, even in macro.

Another possibility is to go Live View, and attach a HoodLoupe to LCD. No camera eyepiece optics to adjust, just the HoodLoupe eyepiece adjusted to see sharp LCD pixels. All other technique is the same. You can fire from LV.

sford122 Loc: Amarillo TX

Since I've added the 36mm extension tube, my diffuser face is not as close as it should be to the end of the lens, for sure. Still waiting to get my bracket to use with my off camera flash cable and move diffuser to the side, like yours.

I too have an astigmatism so correct it with my glasses and adjust glasses to camera with diopter. I really don't like LV(too bright or too dark). With the HoodLoupe on, do you have trouble when it's sunny outside? I use AF sometimes if I have a reasonable sized subject, back off some, then crop picture. I'm sure I'll try the HoodLoupe down the road ($$$) even if only to review my shots taken through the viewfinder.

I think I discovered something today that may be part of my problem. As I mentioned in my reply to Geff, I do set the camera to manual spot AF. (I remember being told to always use the "spot"). However, I just discovered the "spot" metering setting. I did not have that on my Rebel T3. I did a few test shots in the house and it really did seem to get me closer with my focus, if I can keep from shaking, although it seems harder to focus. Another new skill to practice on.

Thanks Douglass for your feedback.

LoneRangeFinder Loc: Left field

As do I.... Live View has limited use for moving creatures, but you can verify focus using a Hoodman Loupe. It adjusts to 3x and greatly helps me evaluate before I download-- or using LiveView when focus stacking or single images taken of more stationary objects.

sford122 Loc: Amarillo TX

I'm sure I'll enjoy the Hoodman Loupe... someday.

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

Because of the discussion on this thread, I investigated how to secure my HoodLoupe to my camera.
Viola!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HOODMAN-CINEMA-STRAP-EXTENDED-SLR-VIDEO-SHOOTING-/360670472455?_trksid=p3284.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%26otn%3D21%26pmod%3D380548905978%26ps%3D54

sford122 Loc: Amarillo TX

Very cool. When you get one, let us know how it works.