Couldn't agree more. I use one and A series f1.7s are cheap these days.

The last one is really dramatic.
(I keep trying to get hold of one of these Tamrons and I always fail !)

Please keep us posted - but don't get yourself hurt when the brood emerges !!!

The jumping spider is very detailed considering its size. Their sight is first class and they are mega curious. If you offer a finger, they will likely as not jump onto it. Not such a good idea with wasps though. Nice deep d.o.f. on the wasp heads.

No.7 and the old gentleman are super shots wthout doubt.

You learn so much from watching this sort of thing unfold. I hated it when I finally had to turf out the one that was building in my workshop (the second one failed to reappear one day). Looking at the depth of the cells in this particular case, you can see why the eggs are laid first of all ! These are great and I hope there is to be a series of them? Is she building it in the orientation shown?

I'm tempted but I fear Mrs wozhere would hit me over the head with it.

Shutter count?

Wonderful rich colours - and I can't see anything wrong with your focussing

Ringflash often does do strange things to images. I agree with Nigel about the 2nd one benefitting from a softer source off to one side. Don't forget that if it isn't going to run away or blow in the wind you can use a very long exposure at ISO100 with a tripod. Therefore, you can wave a smelly piece of gold or silver coated card (from a smoked salmon pack) around and paint it with reflected daylight for maybe 6 or 8 seconds. I've used 20 seconds before now.
If you want to use flash, I use Nissin 'synchro-eye' slave units to trigger remote flashes at times. You can use old units with them that would likely fry your DSLR electronics if connected to the camera. They simply need to detect a flash from the on-board flash so you can shield the subject from that with a bit of card whilst allowing the light to reach the slave unit. You can pick them up off Ebay for maybe a fiver - solid state and excellent.