Jumping spider from today

Went out at lunch for what was meant to be five minutes looking around the garden...decided to check a usual haunt after a moments hesitation, sure glad I did. I spotted this beauty out of the corner of my eye, at first I thought it was a moth, but closer inspection showed that it wasn't. She was very hard to coax out of her hiding spot (nestled behind 3 different leaves), but some gentle coaxing got her out for a few shots so that I could immortalise her! I'm pretty positive it's a female, she was huge, easily approaching 12mm or so. The largest jumper I've seen yet. I'm also pretty sure that I've identified her with my new Australian spiders book - it's a female Opisthoncus necator. They're reasonably common but little is known about them it seems. This image and the crop is from my 2nd outing about 15 minutes after my first series of shots. My first series of shots had her with a kill - this is a first for me, so I was particularly excited when seeing the images on the PC. I'll post those images sometime tomorrow Anyways, onto the images.

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Great captures there, well done. They do look quite cute for spiders.

Beautiful jumper Dave- and great pic- well worth coaxing out
Brian V.

They're absolutely gorgeous spiders, full of wonderful personality and cheek. Yes, cheek. I've had two similar jumpers (albeit smaller) hitch rides on my fingers and they do it with such confidence that it's cheeky. They don't seem fazed at all. This particular jumper was quite shy, I haven't seen a jumper this shy before.

LordV wrote:
Beautiful jumper Dave- and great pic- well worth coaxing out

Thank you! Nature did all the beauty, I just tried to capture it as good as possible! She was definitely worth coaxing out. She got a bit shirty with me though, started waving her palps around, basically telling me to bugger off and mind my own business. But, she did pose for me

Dave

Hiya Dave,
That's a real beauty, well worth the effort to coax her out, nice one.
Cheers for now
Mark

Very nice job!

Great shots, I like the glint in her eyes.

wow man... that's a great shot... I love this macro pictures. I'm going to get a nice macro lens soon.

any sugestions?

lovely shots Dave.... I've also had jumpers jumping on to my hand before..............th​ey really are bold as brass......... one little guy kept jumping onto my finger.... jumping back off.......... looking at me........ jumping back on....... he did this about 6 times.... dunno if he was trying to scare me off (don't know if you remember but it was the little guy that had the HUGE over developed fangs)

i only managed the 2 shots because I was having too much fun just watching him

TONS
Canon 60 ef-s
Canon 100
Sigma 105
Sigma 150
Sigma 180
Tamron 90
Canon 180 (not really a good choice for a beginner in macro as it's an L lens and costs over a grand)
all are great lenses.... and any one of them can get you amazing quality shots

a few people on here also use the amazing mpe-65...... thats a pretty specialist lens tho and is made solely for macro work....... (it can't focus to infinity, the lowest magnification it can go to is 1:1... with the highest mag being 5:1) I'll assume here that dave used his sigma 150 at 1:1 for the jumping spider shots.. (shot 1 anyways...........shot 2 being a crop)... so you can imagine what they'd have been like at 5:1

^^^^^ufffff, thanks dude!!!

Thanks for the very kind words guys and gals

Dave

Plenty. You could go the Canon 60mm ef-s, the Canon 100mm, Sigma 50mm, Sigma 105mm, Sigma 150mm, Canon 180mm, Tamron 180mm, Canon mpe-65. My advice would be to go with the Canon 100mm or Sigma 105mm - they are the best combination of size, weight, working distance and usability. The working distance from the 60mm would be a bit short for my personal liking. The Sigma 150mm/Canon 180mm/Tamron 180mm are all fine lenses, excellent optical quality from what I've read (and my personal experience of course with the Sigma), but are what I consider too large and heavy in all honesty. The Canon mpe-65 is a specialist lens, and in all honesty, not one I'd recommend for usage by someone new to macro. I'd personally go the Canon 100mm as I know it works with the 1.4x TC, I'm not entirely sure the Sigma 105mm works with a TC. The Canon is of course, a bit more expensive than the Sigma, so this might be a factor in your choice.

Of course, you could try something like the Canon 500D close up filter, or a set of kenko/Canon tubes with a nifty 50 as starting alternatives.

Cheers,

Dave

chemicalbro wrote:
lovely shots Dave.... I've also had jumpers jumping on to my hand before..............th​ey really are bold as brass......... one little guy kept jumping onto my finger.... jumping back off.......... looking at me........ jumping back on....... he did this about 6 times.... dunno if he was trying to scare me off (don't know if you remember but it was the little guy that had the HUGE over developed fangs)

i only managed the 2 shots because I was having too much fun just watching him

hehehe yep Alan. They are simply very bold, very curious, and full of strong personality. They're fun to watch, simply because they're fascinating and animated in their actions. This particular jumper wasn't very bold though and would hitch a lift on my finger. She instead waved her palps around telling me to bugger off lol.

Dave

Ok, here's 2 more from the series. Enjoy.

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