Day 185: Crab Spider

This little fellow (and he was small, as you’ll see if you skip forward a bit) was trucking across the floor of my home today. I relocated him to the sink to see just how close I could get, sticking a +3 dioptre on to the front of the lens, and using a flashgun to negate the daft exposure times required for the apertures I was using.

If you are going to use the Tamron 18-270 PZD for this level of close-up work, even casually, then a flashgun is really a necessity. If you’re going for maximum magnification, then there’s quite a difference between the usual 100mm macro lens and a 270mm lens in terms of depth of field. There’s about 2mm of depth to this shot.

Nikon D300; Tamron 18-270mm PZD @ 270mm: Distance of 59.6m recorded (due to dipotre); ISO 400; F/22; 1/160s. VC off.

More about using dioptres below …

Tags: Flash Macro Tamron Manual focus Close focus