Spidey Sense In Flower

This is a very small spider (maybe 4-5mm or 3-16" across) perched inside a white rose... (if I recall correctly). This was shot with a 180mm macro, hand held. This took me quite a while to get right.

I really like the 180mm macro for these sorts of shot. I don't have to insert my lens into the eye socket of my subject.. which my partner tried to do with her much shorter focal length macro setup. Understandably, it didn't go quite so well.

Serious macro photographers will use focusing rails, and focus stacking to get a composite shot. However, you increase your odds of success with a hand-held macro shots if you apply the same multi-shot concept in a slightly different way.

If you manually focus your lens. Select your burst-rapid fire capture setting, and take many photos as you move either closer or further away, very, very slowly. You will get a few focussed on hind legs, the background, foreground, the face, etc. Chances are, you'll get at least a few usable images. While it's theoretically possible that you could still stack the focused parts of your image together, I feel simply choosing the best shot is a safer, and completely reasonable course to take in some circumstances, as found here.
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