The Tropical Undergrowth World Through E-5

Part 3: Daylight Macro

I apologize for the delay. Just after I published Part 2 I shifted my house to Puncak Jalil, a nice double storey link facing a small hill with a water tank. The property agent said since the front door is facing south, I should get good feng shui. What happened was TM did not reconnect my broadband until almost 2 weeks. I have called them relentlessly after the 5th day we made the request for line transfer and after a lot of BP-rising and saliva-spitting complaints, I am back online. I am waiting to hear what the TM Point GM will say about this, as she told me last week she would.

What makes a good macro machine? There are several attributes which I would put-
1. Good low ISO performance.
2. Lightweight.
3. High megapixel.
4. Low moire.
5. High flash sync.
6. Natural colours.
7. Rugged.

I am not including the obvious ones such as image quality since it is so obvious, we would not be considering something which cannot meet such basic requirement. By the way, I wrote about this earlier and the E-5 got my applaud.

It is obvious that any amount of noise will reduce the quality of a macro image, henceforth we normally shoot at low ISO. So we are more interested in the performance in the range of ISO100-400 rather than peeping the ISO3200. Here the E-5 does exceptionally well where the low ISO range is virtually clean. The weight, on the other hand, is rather on the high side and using it without a support can be draining unless you are used to it. But my concern is the twitching of fatigued muscles while trying to lock focus which induces tremor. The megapixel at 12.3 is adequate for cropping although we hope to see something bigger in the future. Yet we rather have a clean 12.3MP than a noisy 16MP.

Moire is a major bane in macro. It just makes nice photos turn bad. The moire level in E-5 is acceptable even at such high image resolution (these two tend to be proportionate), probably due to the power of the new Truepic V+ engine. They told us it works and from what I see, it did. At 1/250s flash sync, this is very good indeed for some of those high speed macro actions. Well, I can get 1/320s with a 3rd party manual flash on my E-500 but the output is not as consistent. With E-5, the TTL was very accurate.

Getting the right color in macro can be forgiving and tricky at the same time. Since we don't deal with human skin tones, there is no proper benchmark to tell if the color of a particular frog is right or not. You can easily get away most of the time. What makes it tricky is if the hue of the subject is not tally with the background or other minor subject. Even worse if you are doing species identification where accuracy is paramount. The E-5's natural color with just the right hue is a great relief, in fact that is expected since all the previous E-system models have proven to give such natural colors without being too pale nor overly saturated.

The last attribute is sort of a paradox. How could you expect a lightweight DSLR to be rugged at the same time? Either way is good, having both is heavenly (remember the OM-1?) and neither is definitely not appealing. The significant advantage of a camera built like a tank is that it allows you to capture nature's masterpieces which otherwise would require special protection, which i turn is definitely going to be cumbersome. Imagine photographing an adult mosquito emerging from its pupa. The most dramatic angle is to shoot it from almost the same level where part of your lens will be submerged. This also increase the risk of the whole equipment and the photographer himself being submerged by accidental trips. Now imagine doing this with a weathersealed lens and body- the big worry is reduced hence the photographer can have more freedom to exercise his art.

Sorry, I was too engrossed in resuming this review that I went on writing without considering how to link it with photos. OK, back on the ground, I will explain how these photos were taken with the E-5, STF-22, EC-14 and ZD50mm f2.0 on manual mode.

The mantis nymph. 1/160s; F/13; ISO250.
This was taken at a public park with plenty of distraction such as kids playing soccer and adults jogging wearing bright colored shirts. To isolate potential disturbing background, I shot this upwards with the sky behind. The flash gives excellent front fill while keeping the sky blue. Nymph mantis is not the most cooperative subject so I chose this photo out of some 20 frames since it shows the most decent pose.

With the lighter E-500, I can have more freedom to poise the camera in awkward positions to get these things right: mantis head facing forward, no leaves obstructing, sky without clouds and ugly tree silhouettes, flash not blocked, flash direction not creating excessive highlight and most important is to get the focus right (while keeping my breath to reduce body tremor). Yes, I used autofocus with 1 active point at the mantis' eye. But the extra weight of E-5 is a disadvantage, comparatively. But not all is lost since this shot was actually taken without using a tripod or monopod. The image stabilizer is proven to reduce the effect from tremors. Even the advanced autofocus system which locked rapidly allows for a significant shorter period of trying to get the focus right, reducing the compounding effect of body tremor drastically.

Don't you just love the colors? I only raise the curve slightly in CS3 without any other post processing tweak. Nope, nothing else at all.


Female jumping spider (Siler semiglaucus) eating an ant. 1/250s; F/13; ISO100.

The female S. semiglaucus is a very attractive spider and is a darling to any macro photographer. Unfortunately she is rather very small and always on the move. I was lucky to find one with a prey- an unidentified (to me) black ant. S. semiglaucus is one of the few species of jumping spiders which are known to prey on ants. The beautiful pattern on her abdomen is an ingredient for a great photo but the problem is with her white pedipalps. If you are shooting from front, you are bound to get some highlights there. If you are shooting her eating, you cannot run away from doing that.

Peeping at 100%, we can see some details are lost. I admit this photo was a bit overexposed so just imagine how it will be at -0.3 EV. What can you see here? Although some part is blown, the overall details are intact, more than enough for a photo taken around 1:2 magnification. Let's be frank, there is no sense in being so meticulous up to the point we want to see every single hair strand. Drop the EV more and I might get some more texture on the pedipalps but at the expense of the black ant. Here the dynamic range is sufficient, in fact very comparable to anything else in its class. To get significantly more DR, use film.

One thing I like about this shot is that I managed to hide the evidence of using a twin flash. Somehow I hate its reflection on the subject's eyes which looks so unnatural.

If this looks softer at 100% compared to the girl's finger in Part 1, it's probably due to the magnified tremor at macro level and the fact I was using the EC-14 teleconverter.


Lynx spider upside down. 1/250s; F/13; ISO160.

Lynx spiders (Oxyopidae) can be very sensitive. Some species, such as this one, have far visual range and will run away when a photographer approaches. They are so agile than once they run into the foliage, it is extremely difficult to detect them. This female thinks she found a secure hideaway underneath a leave.

I noticed that they respond mainly to movement. Once you are close enough and do not make any obvious movement, you are close to invisible to them. This gave me the opportunity to shoot at various angles.

Almost the entire body is in focus. This is not a flat side profile shot as I want to emphasize on the face a bit hence sacrificing part of the tapered abdomen end. I am not really fond of this leg formation as it looks awkward but this is natural for a wary spider. In a more neutral situation, she will have the body pressed lower to the surface and legs pointing forward. The current position, however, makes photography difficult as you cannot get all the legs in focus.

From here the colors are just great, the details are great, the dynamic range is great, so what else there is to say? You don't see noise at the shadowed area. No visible moire. Very sharp. The only setback is perhaps my artistic taste which may not be everyone's cup of tea. But that is a variable on the photographer and as far as proving what this camera can do, it is of little relevance. If it gets the job done, it's worth it. By the way, quite a number of people did say my taste is ok. To them at least.

I wonder if anyone wonders if I used the swivel live view to take such shots with difficult angles. No, I didn't. I am used to using optical viewfinder and I get better intuition when looking straight with the camera in between me and the subject. But these reasons are due to my lack of familiarity with that feature. I did try using the live view a few times and abandoned it for 2 reasons:

1. It will take me more time to get familiar with it up to the point I can use it comfortably. With the limited time I have, I rather explore other potentials than trying to master a new skill.

2. The dreaded shutter lag is there. I don't know much about the lag of other DSLR but the outdated E-330 seems to score higher points here. When doing macro I cannot afford any lag. Even a slight delay may likely cause a shift in focus when we are in the realm of very shallow depth of field.

But it is too harsh to criticize a feature I haven't fully explored yet, especially a feature that can be so helpful in macro works. My wish is Olympus will explore a more functional live view system, one which has reasonably fast autofocus and release the shutter without significant lag. This alone will propel the usability of this feature in many new applications. In other kind of photography, this is probably not even an issue at all. For example if we take candid photos of people in an event, a swivel-LCD live view of any level of shutter lag is simply a gift from the heavens.

So how do I find the E-5 so far? Good enough to say that I want one. Quite badly.

Next part will be out in a few days.


The top photo of the flies having a good time was taken in daytime but with flash and the background was far away, showing only black. Although it was shot with exactly the same setup, it was there as a lure instead of a case study.

The Tropical Undergrowth World Through E-5

Part 2: Moulting Series

One of the more difficult scenes to photograph is the moulting process of a spider. First thing, it requires a lot of luck, patience and scouting skills to witness a moult in process. Spiders are very vulnerable during a moult where even a slight disturbance can disrupt the process which may be fatal. Therefore they tend to moult at times and places other creatures can hardly notice.

Next, an orb-weaver is more difficult to photograph while moulting since they tend to hang by a single thread during the process. Even the slightest breeze will swing it which makes working in a very tight depth of field feels hellish. Even worse if the spider we have is tiny, for obvious reasons.

In the past I have photographed several moults of orb-weavers and usually I will take home about 2-3 good images at best. All are quite sizable, at least 10mm in body length. While looking for a candidate as my glamour macro model, I found a very tiny orb-weaver preparing for a moult. He was so small, some 5mm, which made me think for a while whether this thing is worth the trouble. This thing is small, an orb-weaver and there was gust every now and then. Good combo. It was like some kind of a prank- you get what you want but it won't be that easy.

With me was the E-5, Zuiko Digital 50mm f2.0, EC14 teleconverter and the STF-22 twin flash. I cut some used Styrofoam padding to diffuse the flash heads, tied with rubber bands. The settings are nothing amazing- manual mode with 1/200s, f13, ISO100 and the flash on auto TTL. This is my standard default setting with the E-5 with some parameter adjustment if the need arise. The setting was good enough for this situation but something else was bothering me- the wind gust.

The moult was happening at the outer part of a shrub, easy enough for me to poke my gears at it. But this also makes it susceptible to air movement. The tiny spider was rotating slowly and at times swings between sides. It was almost impossible to lock focus manually, especially with my left hand holding a torch light. I switched to continuous AF and used a single AF point to lock it.

Each of the 11 AF point of the E-5 has twin cross sensors, something like 4 sensors in each point. This makes it very sensitive and very accurate. The C-AF managed to track the constantly moving spider and fired away a burst of shots, retarded only by the recycling of the STF-22. I missed quite a bunch since it was REALLY NOT EASY to track down such a rotating tiny thing through a viewfinder over such a shallow depth of field. But the shots that made through were simply astounding.

Don't you just love when it rotates? Grrrr...

From this case study of shooting a moult with the E-5, let us look at how much helpful it was. The trickiest thing about this was to take the shots while not disturbing the spider. I will need to be at a comfortable distance from it, not touching any leaves that would stir the thread it was hanging to, get a good angle with a pleasing perspective and acceptable background, hold my stance firm and track the instantaneous position of the spider (yeah, thank you so much Mr. Wind). Oh, and don't forget I had the hunt-prone 50mm f2 mounted with EC14. At this point, worrying about the camera setting was insignificant as this should have been sorted out earlier. The E-5 tackled these issues like a professional camera it is meant to be.

Firstly the C-AF was very reliable even at such precise focusing distance, such low light and such lens. If I were to do the same with my E-500, the success rate would drop significantly. I will still get some good shots but not as many and will have to work harder. In fact I doubt that the 50mm f2 can pull such task with the E-500, which was why the 35mm was my primary macro lens.

Secondly, the 12.3MP means there are plenty of room to crop. For typical macro shooters, you don't need further explanation. As for the rest, it is simple to figure out why.

Thirdly, the ergonomics of the camera was very good. It balances well and the grip was solid. Unlike other entry level 4/3 DSLRs, the E-5 comes with a larger optical viewfinder which is a blessing when taking such photos. I did not use the live view since I am not used to it and the fact that there is some shutter delay involved. Just how conservative I am.

I have to give some credit to the STF-22 which made my life easier. Shooting between the leaves have always been painful for my DIY flash bouncer and the twin flash just made this so easy. The flexibility on controlling the power ratio and flash angle was instrumental in making the above shots becoming like what they are. It also resulted with less weird shooting stance.

Now let's talk about the weight factor. Holding the whole setup hand held was quite a challenge, specially for me who is spoilt by the marvel of E-500 (435g) with ZD 35mm (165g) and Cybertik MZ-45 flash (270g without batteries). But frankly, it was worth the extra calories burnt. The set back was that I cannot hold it steady as long as the lighter setup due to increasing tremors as my muscle experiencing fatigue faster. I suppose a bit of dumb bell workout and breathing exercise should mitigate that to certain extent.

Every part of a camera review needs a conclusion and the verdict is simple. I find the combo of E-5 with STF-22 is well worth the extra weight due to its vastly improved functionality which makes life simpler. Well that's the whole point of spending money on new gears, other than to impress girls. I am not even talking about image quality here, which is obviously superb, but just to point out how much the new AF being helpful, compared to ummm... the E-500. Of course there are other systems which have similar or even more advanced AF capability but sometimes I wonder why many of their users rather use manual focus when doing macro.

I will write about image quality in the next part with more photos as case study materials.

Note: The spider is a male orb-weaver of family Araneidae. The gender identification is from the swollen pedipalp. He completed the moult successfully in about 10 minutes after which he went off deep into the shrubs.

The Batik Orb-weaver Nephila antipodiana

With a leg span of up to 6 inches and body length up to 1.5 inches, this is one of the largest orb-weavers in the world. The sight of such huge spider with a web of 1 meter in diameter can be intimidating for some people but otherwise would simply instill awe and admiration. Because of their large size and the fact that they live in even larger webs, meeting one of them is not really that difficult. The Nephila antipodiana is in fact a rather common spider in places of moderately high altitude and cool temperature.

Newly hatched N. antipodiana spiderlings. The nest is in between branches near the web.

A juvenile female.

A Nephila antipodiana following a successful moult.

This is a really big momma. I say that because the size of the female is much larger than the male. It is like comparing a goat and a full grown elephant, and I am not referring to the imported boer. In some webs the males can be seen lurking at the edges, feeding on smaller insects that got trapped but ignored by the female. He might have to compete with the cunning argyrodes, commonly known as dewdrop spiders, which also make a female nephila web as their dining hall.

The smaller male is trying to mate with the female below. Mating can take quite a while.

These little dewdrop spiders are easiest to be found in webs of larger spiders. Several argyrodes species have been found to make a living from looting a nephila’s web. Such behaviour is known as kleptoparatism and studies have indicated that a web with too many argyrodes can severely retard the growth of a nephila. The host sometimes chases them away but most of the time they got to the prey faster and cut part of the web silk away to mask the prey’s vibration. Although argyrodes is of similar size and can be of similar colours to the male nephila, both can be easily distinguished from the body shape where the latter has a flatter abdomen.

A matured male waiting at the edge of a female's web.

There are 2 other nephila species I have found in Malaysia- N. pilipes and N. kuhlii. The webs are almost similar except that N. antipodiana usually has a second or third screen web of slightly different mesh pattern and sort of curved away from the main web where the spider resides. Sometimes several nephila webs area attached together creating a complex of mega webs like a massive fortress. I have heard accounts of small forest birds being snared in such formidable structures.

The range of this spider is wide with records ranging from China to New Zealand. They make webs almost anywhere possible- between branches, telephone cables, open ceilings and fences. Because they are huge and look menacing, I imagine it can easily cause discomfort to most people whenever a nephila is seen nearby human habitat. The natural tendency of most human behaviour is to expel the spider or kill it. This is unnecessary as orb weavers are generally gentle spiders and does not attack human, however gruesome they may look. A population of nephila in any neighborhood will reduce several kinds of pest insects which have been shown in several studies related to biological control of crop pest. Their huge webs and the tendency to cluster create a formidable defense against medium and large flying insects. For the smaller flyers, the males and argyrodes will take care of them.

A female coming out from a moult.

Some time recently a group of people in Madagascar made a fabric out of the silk of a nephila species local to that region. It took 4 years to collect and weave an 11’ x 4’ textile from the extraction of a million spiders. By weight, spider silk is stronger than steel and can stretch up to 40% of its length without breaking. It is interesting to know the extent of spider silk in science and industry which scientist believe can lead to revolutionary materials. But unlike silk worms they cannot be raised in captivity without them cannibalizing one another.

Spiders on NTV7's The Breakfast Show.

Recently I was invited by a national television company to talk about macro photography and spiders. It was initiated when a senior producer in NTV7 was interested in the photos I published in my facebook in the Macro Mania album. So we corresponded via email on the particulars and agreed to have on The Breakfast Show of Thursday 21 January 2010.

My friend Marcus was also invited to the show as he is also a spider enthusiast. To make things more realistic and fun, we decided to go to the set wearing our usual outdoor outfit, which for Marcus means his short pants. Against the pleas of some people I insisted on wearing my signature macro shirt and the turtle sanctuary hat which had been with me for many years. I felt very excited to appear on TV for the first time but when the program day drew close, usual nervousness started to creep in. Now, how if I make a fool of myself on live TV? Yes, it’s live.




Fortunately the Breakfast Show crew team had been very helpful which reflected their experience and professionalism. The senior producer of the show, Tengku Firhad, greeted us at Sri Pentas lounge before bringing us through the maze of the Media Prima complex for make up. I think the last time I had make up was when I was in a stage play back in primary school. Those are not memories I really fond of.

The Breakfast Show starts on 8.30am every weekday. For that day we will be the first guests with my slot starting at about 9am, I think. The lovely hosts were Joanne de Rozario and Aishah Sinclair who greeted us when the show was on commercial break. Me and Marcus sat on a sofa opposite them and when the crew gave the cue that we are on air, my mind simply went blank. All prior preparations suddenly vaporized and I felt at the mercy of the ladies.




It was not much of a slaughter actually as they have been very kind to make sure the show went smooth. I admit that I was nervous and tended to mumble rather than speaking like what people usually do on TV. Earlier I sent 20 photos to be used in the show and when we got to the part of talking about the photos, the first one shown was a female Argyrodes with her newly hatched babies. I think that was considered the most decent photo being talked about during the show. The next ones were about mating, courting, predation and mating again. Having to describe the mating process of animals to celebrity girls on live TV was not what I had in mind earlier.

At a point during the show we had a live call with the GM of Epson Malaysia who shared on their recent initiatives to promote photography in Malaysia such as bringing in Steve McCurry to conduct workshops here. There will be a photo contest soon with Mr. McCurry as the judge so stay tune to their website in February for details. The next guest that day was Vince from Akademi Fantasia.








There were a lot of other subjects which I wish I talked about during the show, especially on the importance of spider in our environment and conservation of the endangered species. The show was about 20-30 minutes and I believe it was a good one with a lot of facts about spiders has been shared. Nevertheless there are other fascinating information and messages that I would like to pass across to Malaysians. It is my hope that I can do it here in my blog with you.

Watch the program online here (go to Part 3) THE BREAKFAST SHOW 10 - 21 January 2010