Images of morning dew in a spider’s web are a bit cliche, but things only become cliches when they have serious staying power. And they have that staying power because they’re good.
Here’s a b/w and a color version from this morning, when I was trying out the relatively inexpensive macro lens on my mirrorless camera. The results are encouraging enough that I pulled the trigger on trading in all of my old DSLR lenses that I no longer use (keeping only the world-class 200mm “micro” and 500mm telephoto for my D850), in hopes of scrounging up enough cash to buy the recently released professional-level 100mm macro Sony came out with in October.
This was basically an experiment for me to get used to using a macro lens on my mirrorless camera; I have a mature workflow for my Nikon DSLR macro, but I’m starting to try to take only one camera in the field with me, and for birds I need the Sony, so I’m figuring out macro on the Sony. Very slowly. I’m relatively encouraged by the results.
The web wasn’t flat, having anchors on different flower spikes of one of our lavender plants in the front yard. Because of that, I wasn’t able to get the whole thing in focus in one frame, and I didn’t feel like starting off with image stacking. But I found the focus peaking* in the mirrorless viewfinder to be invaluable; the little highlights enabled me to rock back and forth to get the largest possible in-focus area. (You can do focus peaking on the D850, but you have to be shooting in liveview, which basically means you need a tripod. Fine for shooting fungi or these spiderweb dewdrops, but not for handheld insect photography, which is my main interest in macro work.)
[*Side note: it’s focus peaking, not focus peeking. It shows where the focus peaks, even though, yes, it does allow you to “peek” at the focus area.]
Apart from the focus issue, another challenge I had to overcome was the lighting: in our area, these dewdrops occur almost exclusively on foggy mornings–today it was so socked in I couldn’t even see the street in front of the house! And since I don’t have a flash unit for the Sony yet, I had to accept the lighting as it was, which meant a bit lower shutter speed and a bit wider aperture than I normally like to use when shooting macro. (On my Nikon, I can use the flash, which allows me to just shoot any aperture I want and not worry about shutter speed.) Some photographers can avoid this situation by bringing a spray bottle into the field with them; I prefer to photograph only what’s already there in the field. It’s a choice, not a value judgment.
So I have a couple of takeaways from this morning: the macro I have does a decent job of things, and I need to buy a flash.