Originally Posted by Mark Elberson
Good observation--yes, this was using the PocketWizards (TT5). What I basically did was set out a piece of regular copy paper on a table, took the spider and placed it on the paper, got my (mostly useless) gorillapod and mounted my flash+PW on it, and pointed it at a low angle at the spider. Turned on high-speed sync in the flash unit, calibrated, and shot away. I wasn't getting as much flash power as I liked--couldn't get shutter speed above 1/50s since ambient light was low--so I turned off ETTL and cranked the flash up to full power, but for some reason my camera didn't figure out I was no longer in ETTL. Manually calculated my exposure. As I was literally inches away from both the spider and the speedlite, I was not prepared for the intensely blinding power of full flash right beside my face....
Good times, good times.
Anyway, high-speed sync works well. I can confirm that. Remote triggering works well too. Would not try this with a more...active subject. I don't know what was going on with mr. spider. Even with eight eyes exposed to that kind of flash intensity, he barely made a move. But as soon as I released him in the backyard, he went scurrying off. Lucky for him I found him photogenic--I usually squash spiders. [:P]