That time a 20 year old photo of a 'giant spider' turned out to be a regular house spider shot with a macro lens

I saw a post going around claiming this massive spider was found in someone's basement in Texas and it absolutely terrified me. Then I actually looked up the image details and found out it was taken with a Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens that can magnify stuff 5 times its real size. The spider was probably just a common wolf spider no bigger than a nickel. Has anyone else traced a viral scare back to a camera trick like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

brooket436d agoRising Star

Exactly, that leaf trick is gold. Same thing with those "monster" centipede pics.

smith.elliot6d ago

That's exactly the kind of thing that drives me crazy. A few years back, a buddy of mine sent me a photo of a "monster centipede" he found in a hotel, and it looked like it could eat a small dog. I had to talk him down and explain the guy used a macro lens on a bathroom floor. Best thing you can do is look for the green leaf or a blade of grass in the shot, because that's the tip-off for that kind of extreme close up. If the picture's too crisp and detailed on something that big, it's almost always a tiny creature blown up with a good lens and some bright lighting.

ruby6596d ago

Is it really that big a deal though? I mean, yeah the photo was fake, but your buddy almost got upset over a bug pic.