I found this little critter in a toilet paper roll, and I am curious of what it is. It is very small, the body is maybe a millimeter wide. I was found indoors in the north of Sweden. In two of the photos it is hiding between the two sheets of my toilet paper, in case that helps to give an idea of its scale. I forgot to take a photo with a reference object.
Well, I don’t have any real macro lens so in order to get as close as possible I used my widest prime lens (Nikkor 28mm f/2.8) reverse mounted by the BR-2a adapter, as well as two extension tubes. This bug is small! It’s not a good lens, but I had nothing else that could give this kind of magnification. Most macro lenses have a 1x reproduction ratio, but by my calculations I reached about 4x with this setup. I think I used a 50mm f/1.8 reversed for the shot from above, with extension tubes, getting about 2x magnification.
That means that the entire picture frame is 5.9mm wide in the first two photos, and roughly twice that in the last two.
I am a recovered arachnophobe who is now obsessed by spiders, so I recognised it as an arachnid - eight legs are a dead giveaway - and it isn’t a spider, scorpion, mite or tick. So that leaves pseudoscorpions. I bought camera equipment just to photograph arachnids and have been looking for pseudoscorpions ever since.
I have a Canon 350D with macro, 100mm focal length with a life size (1x) macro magnification. I know that I can get greater than 1x magnification by using tubes, but I don’t yet. I have heard of your method, Henrichek, from a professional phtographer who does that when he doesn’t have a macro handy. I also use a ring flash to get 8 legs and not 16, when shadows are an issue. Given my images are published, I need all this stuff. I wasn’t into photography at all until I got into macro, for my spiders and am now hooked.
I leave my food scarps on the plate when we eat outside (most of the time) just so I can photograph the critters who finish off my lunch.
This was the first time I got something to try my macro equipment on that is more interesting than a coin. I dislike spiders and insects, but this one was small enough to be handled easily. I wouldn’t be surprised if this new hobby of mine starts warming up my relationship with arachnids and insects.
I wish I had a dedicated macro lens as well, but my finances don’t allow for that yet. A reversing ring is a cheap way of getting high magnifications. This technique is of course not as flexible or comfortable as using a macro lens. There is no auto-focus, and no automatic aperture control, and for Nikon not even metering (unless you have a high end model). I think even cheap Canon SLR’s support stopped-down metering, but there is another problem with using reversed lenses on Canon. I believe they have only electronic aperture control, so if the lens is stopped down (which must be done with the lens attached the right way, and holding the aperture preview button while removing the lens since there are no aperture ring on the lenses) you will barely see anything through the viewfinder. With my lenses I can hold the aperture fully open with a lever while framing the shot, in order to get enough light to see by in the viewfinder, and then release the lever just before taking the shot to stop down to the selected aperture. It’s a bit tricky, and this was my first attempt, but it’s fun and cheap.
Here we barely have any bugs during winter, and this has been the first one I found since I bought the reversing ring. Personally I am still thankful that we don’t have as nasty spiders and insects as you do in Australia. The “worst” “spiders” we get here are some long-legged ones of the order Opiliones (Harvestmen), which aren’t even proper spiders. I am not sure if I can bring myself to photograph one of those. The working distance with my setup is not large, and they could probably reach the lens and climb up onto my camera if I move close enough to get a close-up of their body :eek:.
I am really impressed that you managed to get such great photos using this teachnique. I hadn’t appreciated how good I have it with the lens and ring flash.
Our spiders are gorgeous! You are talking to the most obsessed arachnophile in the country. I used to feel the way you do, but not since I started to deliberately study them to over come the fear - arachnophobia in Australia does mean you spend a lot of your life spooked! The creatures I used to find so horrible, I now find more adorable than any other.
What the camera can do is bring out behaviour that can’t be seen any other way. For example, I will photograph a burrow, with owner if possible, every day for a month, and then get a superb series of images of the way the spider has built up the entrance, woven in grass and other material and created an architectural masterpiece. The same can happen with webs - I get such a good idea of the lifetime of the web and owner, what they’ve eaten, and usually what eats them. So few of my spiders make it to maturity. The birds see to that! But it’s only when I look back over a series of photographs that I get the full picture, because I don’t know what will be important as I take them.
I took nearly a thousand photos of my favourite wolf spider and her burrow in the garden over six months during which she bred twice, was attacked by birds twice, rebuilding her burrow over weeks, and finally succumbed to the birds. The macro lens lets me see her world at spider scale. Its extraordinary. Wonderful fun. I’ve finished my book on spiders now, and it is published, so I am having to learn to use a normal zoom for the next book. The world has changed scale! I even have to get used to using a telephoto to get the birds and other critters I need. I love the way I see the world through a camera lens.
Should anyone be interested in what species of pseudoscorpion is in Henrichek’s original photos, it’s the “house pseudoscorpion” Chelifer cancroides. Here’s a page with authentic photos of the species. Here’s another.
Like many spider species, this one pseudoscorpion has made an adaptive shift from its original “natural” habitat to the constant-climate, food- and water-poor environment of manmade buildings. Like most arachnids they are strictly predatory and can catch prey (household insects, natch) almost as large as they are.
Thank you for the interesting information about this little arachnid. I like how descriptive that scientific name is as well.
I do wonder what insects they live on here, especially during winter. There is not really an abundance of insects this time of year. The few pseudoscorpions I have found (months apart) have been in my bathroom, sitting on top of my roll of toilet paper, with no other bugs in sight. These are probably the only bugs I have seen in that part of my apartment.
People always ask that about house spiders too. You may not see your household insects but rest assured, they’re there. I couldn’t tell you for sure which ones are common in Sweden. Here in Seattle all houses have carpet beetles and their larvae, dust mites, usually gnats, often firebrats (members of the silverfish order), booklice, and if mammalian pets are present there are invariably some fleas and their larvae. Many other species are present occasionally. These things keep comparatively low populations in part because arachnid predators are present. Web-making spiders, in particular, are always more conspicuous than their insect prey because of the nature of the web foraging technique. But if there were no prey, obviously they’d starve. They don’t need a great deal of prey because their metabolim is low.
Leave a web around over winter and you will be surprised how much prey is around. But you have to watch regularly, because some spiders, like my black house spiders (Badumna spp.) and daddy long-legs/cellar spiders (Pholcus phalangioides) may kick the leftovers out of the web when they have finished sucking them dry.
I find the webs all over the house, inside and out, the best entertainment around - and it’s all free! Mind you, the birds are very good at picking off most of my entertainment as soon as the web builders get to a snackable size.