That's the kind of experience-centered encouragement I was hoping for. I'll get one SK300II to start, then start the inevitable experimenting to work out how to get the best out of what I've got.

I've a Nikon D700, with M-series objectives 5,10,20x, simple LED lighting, Stackshot and Zerene stacker (http://johnsankey.ca/closeup.html#MO). Even with mirror-up mode, the shutter vibration lasts 100ms or so, so I have to use 1/8s or more to get adequate bite; I'd really like to get better (http:/...

With my Nikon D700, I'm finding that even with mirror-up mode I'm limited to about 10x due to shutter curtain vibration. So, I need to move to rear-curtain-synchronized flash. Short recycle time is needed (powering from 110V is fine) along with short flash duration; power requirement is low, cable c...

There's a free program called startrails that is designed to do the job. I've used it to get two hour trails even in a city environment where the maximum time exposure was 15s to avoid background light wiping out the stars.

See http://johnsankey.ca/multispectrum.html and http://johnsankey.ca/insectvision.html for exposure notes etc. with UV-visible-IR filters. Unless you have a CoastalOpt lens, you have to use LiveView to focus IR because the focus points will be different than for visible. As long as the viewfinder is...

Found one: http://www.dealcorner.com/
They have lots of stock beyond what's listed and M. Dugentas says Charles has already educated him about focus stacking requirements

One last idea is to use an indirect measurement. While you won't be able to resolve scratches made by 0.05 micron abrasives, you can certainly detect light scattering off masses of them. That will appear like haze on the surface of a mirror. As you know, it's easy to detect haze on a mirror by goin...

rjlittlefield wrote:Of course I'm delighted to hear that this stack runs perfectly in Zerene Stacker, but the differences shouldn't be quite this obvious!

I'm not sure, Rik - I hear a lot of people say Zerene works out of the box and neither of the others do
I can vouch that CSM/P is a pain by comparison.

The 45mm parfocal distance isn't necessary, of course. I'll check out the Nikons. Thanks for the link, Charles.
John

Does anyone know of a source of a 20x well corrected DIN objective that is corrected for no cover glass, for best resolution of small but solid insects? I've so far come up empty-handed.

Microscopists are much more generous in their acceptance of blurry images than most photographers are - all they have to do is identify things whereas we want them to look sharp. DoF very much depends on who is judging it. However, DoFocus and DoField are essentially the same concept. Edmund's DoF o...

Another option to simplify the optics and reduce the amount of glass in the optical path is to use the objective directly: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12147 The correction of an infinity-corrected objective when used finite at ca. 200mm spacing from the sensor is very close...

The StackShot rail is totally reliable at 10 um steps, but has issues below that both with irregular steps and vibration. For magnification higher than about 10x, I suggest you'll get better results by auto-focusing a microscope rather than using a StackShot rail. I suspect vibration with your prese...

I got the 100 mm. The only times I need focus stacking are when DoF problems are insurmountable without it, with insects that means a lot smaller than 100 mm. When I can, I take photos of live insects in the field. The smaller slide is easier to position at any angle and keep everything rigid.

Anders, a first approximation to the angular precision required is the thickness of the filter thin-flm stack (all layers) compared to the wavelength of the light you are looking at is: thickness*(1-cos(angle)) < lamda/4 For narrow-band-pass filters, the thickness will increase as the bandwidth of t...