Ok - I bought some new toys not too long ago, and their only function is to allow me to be able to take photographs of things that fluoresce. So far this has been very tricky because I only have some of the pieces, which means I have to take a photo to even be able to see if something fluoresces, and many times things just don't. Add on top of that, the fact that you can only do this in the dark, so focusing and just about everything is made much more difficult.

But tonight (with the help of my lovely wife/assistant who was on light and spider tracking detail), I managed a couple shots of a small (the shot below is at higher than 1:1 magnification) jumping spider on a leaf. To my utmost pleasure, the little fella does indeed fluoresce a nice green color, while the leaf fluoresces a lovely red (the spider is mainly a greyish-brown, and the leaf is normally green - in fact, if you look closely at the spider's shadow - you will see that the leaf that was shielded from the flash is indeed still green!).

This shot required me to focus, hold steady and then have Anya turn off the lights. I then fired off a frame or three and checked my results and tried again. The spider actually did sit still at this point, so I might have been able to use a tripod, but at this point, I was still working handheld.

Regardless, the results are just super cool.....

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM with Yellow 12 Filter, 1/250 sec at f/7.1. Image Stabilization on. ISO 400. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and special fluorescence excitation filter. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.