Spidermites Play King of the Mountain (NX1, 60mm, RAYNOX250)

MiniatureScapes - A whole world living inside a few millimeters.

The field of view in this image is only about 4mm by 4mm as tiny spidermites, almost invisible to the human eye, climb back and forth between two Gardenia plant leaves in our Winter garden. The velvety smooth web gives way to the pressure of their steps, appearing as if they leave footprints in snow. Not all keep their balance as some mites tumble down the "mountain". But they all move very fast across this tiny landscape.

This image was handheld using the NX1 and 60mm Macro lens with RAYNOX250 (-8 diopters) attached, and was manually focused with the RAYNOX touching the web. Final focus on the spidermite to the lower middle right was achieved by barely swaying the camera back and forth with the shutter button partially depressed. The mites move so fast that using rails on a tripod was inefficient in this tiny 4mm by 4mm field of view. Each mite itself is less than ¼mm in size.

Here is a reduced size, low resolution preview of the whole image:

Spidermites in a 4mm by 4mm field of view (low resolution, reduced size)

The full image (full size but slightly reduced resolution as are all the images in my public galleries) is in the MiniatureScapes Gallery on my website. Click on this Link to Spidermites to see the battle for King of the Mountain. Clicking on the displayed image will increase it to the full size of your browser window. The Grey >Slideshow button will display the image full screen.

I hope you like it and comments or questions are welcome.

Ed