best options for lenses

[Andy Davies]

I'm just about to embark on purchasing lenses for an optical bench setup that will use stepper motors to move a Nikon D810 on a microscope stage. I have a bellows and Nikkor 60mm at the moment.

I have looked at the lens reviews on the coinimaging website but there may be options not tested there. I am interested on member's recommendations for various magnifcations from 1x to 40x perhaps giving the top three with first being the best optic with money no option!

[ray_parkhurst]

I'd make recommendations but I do all my work on APS-C, so can't tell you what lenses are best for FF coverage. The tests at coinimaging.com are also done on APS-C I believe (Nikon D200 or D300).

[austrokiwi1]

That's a very hard call with such a huge magnification range. Mark Goodman's site is really interesting and useful, but what works for coins is not necessarily going to work with other subjects. Coins usually fall in a magnification range of 1-2 through to 2-1 ( although I have one tiny coin that takes 3.8-1 so that it will fill a FF sensor ( still can't imagine how people could use a coin that small with out loosing it).

To further "illustrate" the point with the Schneider Kreuznach APO 45/4 HM which has a good review on the coin imaging web site( APSc). I tried it on my FF sensor it was adequate but not great. When used on a MFT sensor ,which saw it operate in the top part of its optimal magnification range( 0.2X - 0.4X, it went from good to brilliant. From that personal experience sometimes I set my FF camera to APSc capture just to reduce the magnification I need to use to fill the sensor with the subject,