Walking along the Augusta Canal for a final time yesterday morning before returning home, I encountered this spider, hanging in the air from a concrete supports of an overpass, and took shots of him without a flash and with one. After being starved for insects over the winter (photographically speaking), I was thrilled to have a chance to photograph one.
I probably should have taken out my macro lens, which I had with me in my bag, but opted instead to shoot with the 55-250mm zoom lens that was on my camera. It was still relatively early in the morning and the the spider was mostly in the shade, so lights was an issue. I upped the ISO to 800, but still needed an exposure of 1/8 of a second at f/9. Fortunately I had my tripod with me, so I used that to get a relatively sharp shot. I shot with the zoom at 250mm and used manual focus.
The first image was with natural light and the second one was taken using the camera’s built-in flash. The light coming from behind the spider in the first shot helps to illuminate the spider’s legs, which look almost translucent. The flash in the second photo reveals some additional details of the spider, although it did add some reflections, because I did not have a diffuser for the flash.
Which one do you prefer?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Natural light wins hands down for me. The detail in the legs is much nicer, as you said. For additional detail on the body you might lighten up shadows in post processing. A reflection screen (a sheet of paper will do the trick, too, with small subjects) would do the same while taking the picture, if you dislike postprocessing.
Keep going, I like your pictures!
Although the detail is a bit better in the second shot, the colors appear warmer and look more natural in the first. Does your camera have a setting to expose for the ambient light and fire the flash too (great for a person standing in front of a sunset, for example)? If it also has a setting to underexpose the flash by a stop or so (without also affecting the overall image exposure), that could be a very effective combination.
I vote for the first because of the colors
I enjoy the first more because there are the colors, and when it comes to the average person doing a field identification, you will have natural lighting and will need to know the colors. The second does give a few more details and might be interesting for arachnists studying the species in the lab, who are intimately familiar with the spider already.
They’re both beauties, how big we’re they?
The spider was pretty small, maybe an inch or so in size.
Amazing result!
I like the first shot because of the colors.
I think that you are in the definite majority. I suspect that I would need to tweak the one I shot with flash to bring out a bit more color, but I suspect that it still would not look as colorful as the one I shot with natural light.
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