The crane fly is an amazing creature close up, those huge eyes, the complexity of the sensory organs and  the  elephantine  front of  the  thorax  are  never suspected  when  someone  casually  swats  the  life  from  one.
These are the parts responsible for the click beetles huge jumping ability which is equivalent to a human jumping about 60 feet vertically from a standstill. The beetle is upside down here,   the prong is on  the  thorax,  the grooved plate on the head. At a sign of danger the prong is inserted  into the recess of  the  plate groove,  the muscles tighten to  tension the  two  together  and  then  the  beetle straightens again to part  the  two.  With the pressure between the two,  release when it comes is violent,  the prong and plate tips striking  the surface with force propelling the beetle into the air.  When the beetle is inverted as here, escaping is the same, but it's the tips of the head and abdomen that strike the surface to propel it up.
Above, the head of a garden spider, its eight eyes  just  visible,  four in a centre group,  two to  the  right,  and the  two to the  left  just  possible  to  see  at  the  edge.
Above,  a tiny leaf beetle crosses over the gap between  a  fingernail  and a fingertip.
Right, an extreme close-up of a silverfish head and feelers.
How they were taken: Crane fly and Click beetle photos taken with an HP850 digital camera fitted with 10x and 7x Tiffen close up lenses and mounted on an old microscope stand.  This set-up also took the spider and silverfish photos when hand held.      A Canon SX260 digital camera used hand held for all the ant photos, nettle weevil  and  pollen  beetles.     A  Pentax  Optio  S  digital  camera  used  hand  held  for  the  leaf  beetle.
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On the left a Pharoah ant, one of the smallest ants found in Britain and only 1.5 to 2 mm in length.  An immigrant, these are mostly found in homes but can survive and nest outdoors in some parts of the south of  England  as  here  in  a  London  fringe  reserve.
Macro and Micro
All photos taken with a variety of average low cost consumer cameras and accessories
Left, a nettle weevil which feeds on the leaves of stinging nettles.  The small scale of this photo can be judged from the size of the toothed serrations and sting spikes under the leaves of this nettle.
On the right, two minute pollen beetles have climbed the stamens at the central heart of a dandelion flower and  are  feasting  on  the  abundant  pollen.
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Here on the left a swarm of tiny common black ants are attacking a green caterpillar and will cut it up to be carried back into their nest as food.
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This three millimetre long yellow meadow ant will rarely come out into daylight, but is out in this case to repair recent damage to it's grassland nest top.