This image of an Araneus spider was taken in a hut in Denmark where I was on vacation. I decided against removing the spider from the hut in favor of this photograph. Sometimes a spiderweb catches and bends the sunlight in just the right way to produce this iricescent sheen, but I never managed to take a good photo of that. So presented with this opportunity, I immediately see the image I want to take.
This was shot on a used Sony RX10 IV (2017). My first and only camera (so far). Notably this is a bridge camera, so it comes with one lens you can't swap out. But it is the size of- and otherwise handles like a normal mirrorless. This lens is a solid allrounder for a beginner like me, it ranges from 24 to 600mm (equivalent, with a 2.7 crop factor) with f2.4 to f4.
This image was taken at 600mm, f16, ISO 320, 1/40 sec. One advantage of this big crop factor is how close it can focus at 600mm, only 92cm (3 ft.) from the target. Retrospectively f16 was a bit overkill, but being relatively new to photography I thought tighter aperture makes for a sharper image (which only holds up to around f8 with this camera). A bit more bokeh might have also looked nicer here I think.
To get the iridescence effect the light must shine at a very shallow angle. So I put the camera on a tripod with a remote shutter, darken the room and from the other side I shine my flashlight through the web. I take a lot of photos, trying out a lot of angles and settings. Only a few of them capture the iridescene nicely in the center but I get some nice shots with different colors. Purple, orange, and different hues of green and blue. I like this turquoise shimmer the most, because it goes well with the brown spider.
The web was hanging vertically with the spider looking down, so it's rotated. I pushed the colors a bit and darkened the left side of the image to match the less illuminated right side of the web. Also slight cropping. I didn't have to push the blacks much, as the room was very dark already.