How are you mounting the subject? I had a very similar problem when I used blobs of BluTak (putty like stuff used to stick posters to walls) on the mount and stuck a pin holding the specimen in that. After squashing it into position and adjusting to get the subject roughly in the FoV, the BluTak ke...

Note: The formula I scribbled down was wrong for the first item (w). If you copied the formula prior to this post, write down a new copy of the 'w' formula. Sorry about that but I was reading my python code while doing it and wasn't wearing my glasses, apparently. Thanks.

Yes, it is probably overkill to worry abut such things. But just in case, dipping pins in matte black paint, or spraying them with it, does eliminate any possibility of reflections. Yes, in our exacting hobby things like specular reflections are "insidious" and can "sneak up on you". Luckily for me...

I have one suggestion. Instead of white pinheads, the pins should be black so that they don't cause little specular reflections. I have some black-head pins but due to the coating they are just as reflective as any of the other colors. I suppose one could use a sharpie or black paint to prevent thi...

Assuming you want to make a truncated cone out of your favorite diffusion material and that the material is at least somewhat flexible and comes in sheets, here's a systematic way to do it with a fair amount of precision. You will need a sheet of diffusion material (the bigger the better), a standar...

I agree with Chris S. and enricosavazzi. The CA on the 2x is "symmetric" (axial) and easily correctable. I use PWP8's CA correction function and have had no real issues.

Makes perfect sense, now. Thanks for the info and link. Now, how can I modify it to ..........? Half the fun of this hobby is finding ways to repurpose things for it. Especially things just lying around.

I have these, and I agree with jnh. It's too dense and not concave enough. It absorbs 4 stops of light at least and light exiting the underside is not broad enough for Mitty working distances, IMO. It's made of robust material (some kind of spun fiber), though. There's about .75cm or so of diffuser ...

Reply for Chris S., et. al. Thanks for the reply. The laser is a "Pinty Hunting Rifle Green Laser Sight Dot Scope Adjustable with Mounts" in "Sports & Outdoors › Sports & Fitness › Airsoft & Paintball › Airsoft › Sights & Optics › Gun Scopes" on Amazon. (It even has a remote switch to turn if on/off...

I built one of these using "redneck engineering." The source is a cheap ($25) green laser for BB-guns, air-guns, etc. The rest is pure redneck engineering. It is held in place via the hot shoe on the camera. The laser sight has an on/off button on its top. Took about 30 minutes to build and properly...

Update to this project. No real advance made. As most of you predicted, the loss of light is just too great, since it had to pass through too many splitters and too much glass. Hardware-wise, it made a neat package but really was impractical. I was unable to get an approximation to Kohler illuminati...

I've searched the forums looking for a similar question but have been unsuccessful, so I'm posting this idea for feedback and critique. Apologies if this has been already covered in some post. I have an EPI (reflected light) microscope with a 30W bulb and I want to use flash for my stacking while, p...

Thank you for the kind complement, Chris. You are correct. When I was visiting each beach I simply walked to a point where dry sand was merging into wet sand and scooped up some of the damp sand, as I did not want to muddy my shoes. A 10-meter walk further down the beach would have probably changed ...

When viewed at 7.5x magnification, plain old sand shows some interesting personality. These stacks are plain, brown beach sand magnified 7.5x times. The sand happens to be from the five D-Day (June 6, 1944) landing beaches on the Normandy coast that were coded as "Utah", "Omaha", "Gold", "Juno", and...

I see now why the "simple" method will work. Assuming the forward backlash equals the rearward backlash (a reasonable assumption), they will cancel each other out when using the "simple" method. The x-position after the backward return before shooting is actually less than what ZS thinks (in its pos...