I’ve always had an obsession with looking at the dew drops hanging in spider webs in the grass - wondering what they would look like up close. A few years ago I finally put together a setup to be able to see what they look like in their full beauty by taking hundreds of images and stacking them.
Using the Olympus camera the EM1 Mark 2, I attached the MC-20 teleconverter along with a modified 16mm extension tube so that the teleconverter would attach to the 60mm macro lens. That gave me 2.4x magnification on a micro 4/3 sensor. Then, adding the Raynox 250 gave me 5.5x magnification- which is a bit over 3.5mm field of view.
The camera is still able to focus bracket with this setup, so I would set the camera down near the spider webs with dew drops and let it do it’s thing…
Here are some of the results - the spider is the tiny Florinda coccinea - I live in Quincy, Illinois, United States
Thanks to this poem by Antler I always think about what is reflected in dewdrops and even look for the the photographer in each dewdrop
A SECOND BEFORE IT BURSTS
Seeing my reflection on a river
and seeing a bubble float into my reflection
the bubble also reflecting me,
So I see the reflection of my face in the bubble
in the reflection of my face
on the river,
While below on the bottom
the shadow of the bubble passes over
golden fallen sunken leaves
So it looks like inside my face is a riverbottom
of golden fallen sunken leaves
with the shadow of a bubble passing over
while on the surface
My reflected face with a bubble moving in it
also reflecting me
and me thinking
It will burst any second
just before it
bursts . . . .
Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass
