Dear friends, please enlighten me if you know about the following: is it harmful to use magnets near our photographic equipment? I have a 470mm magnet bar with a maximum weight load of 10kg (the biggest I own). In my macro rig, I have two Newport magnetic bases that each can hold 150 lb (68 kg). Ar...

Btw, I had that $300 mitutoyo the other member very likely picked up a month ago in my cart for half the day while I weighed if I really wanted to try to risk it or not. I kicked myself when it went out of stock and jumped on another copy for $300 when it recently came up. Looks like the same selle...

I use them for holding lighting equipment, as seen here . Once in a great while, I use one to hold a subject or even a camera. I've strenuously avoided the cheap articulating stands, though. My investment in Noga was a bit painful at the time, but I'm glad for their quality every time I use them. --...

Large NA is not a friend of structural colors. A quick explanation is that the wide entrance cone is looking at each point on the subject from a bunch of different angles at the same time. Each angle sees a different color. When lots of them get added together, at best you get diminished colors, at...

In my own system, 1 second and 1/4 second exposures are too quick, since shutter-induced vibration impacts them. (I do not shoot macro with a camera that has electronic first shutter curtain.) So I use 8 second exposures, for which shutter shock is insignificant. If you continue experimenting with c...

Mkbn, Well, you did do a nice job on your tests, especially for where you say you are in your journey. Testing microscope objectives isn’t all that easy. (Though it will get easier as you get your macro rig and your lights dialed in.) Your image of (mostly) black and white scales looks good. There i...

I've had my share of stacks like the one shown. When I get them, I generally change the lighting; if I can get light from a broader range of angles onto the parts of the subject that "swirl" in the stacks, the swirling tends to go away. So might we question not the software, here, but the lighting? ...

Those are fabulous!

(I took the liberty of editing the link to make it go directly to discoverwildlife.com.)

--Chris S.

It's mostly been things like noticing that my speedlights seem to vary in flash intensity when I crank them down to 1/64, causing uneven frame brightness, or the previous issue of one not firing when it's too close to the transmitter (helped with aluminum foil), since the 20x Mitutoyo certainly doe...

Mkbn, I downloaded the full-resolution versions of your stacks, and layered them up in Photoshop. Then I aligned them, zoomed in, and flashed between layers. (This is what I do when conducting my own lens tests--I find it very sensitive to showing differences.) My sense is that your Mitutoyo lens is...

Offline, some of us on the admin team have discussed reaching out to Tatyana, and I plan to do so. Robert's work is indeed a tremendous resource that we hope will remain. Also, today on Facebook, Tatyana mentioned a video lecture delivered by Robert a few years ago: Photographing Wild Alaska and Jap...

And welllll, if you would feel like (and have time to) test another 20x N.A. 0.42 mitutoyo, I'd definitely love to know if I should have any concerns or comparability to an actual 20x mitutoyo. I wanted to spend part of the next day or two trying out frustratingly (due to my skill level) comparing ...

I regularly test Mitutoyo objectives for forum members, so I've tested far more such optics than I care to count. This is likely far more Mitutoyo objectives than anyone else on the forum has tested. My testing numbers may even exceed the total of all Mitutoyo objectives tested by the entirety of al...

This last one was with different setup and without filters... anybody knows why there is almost no color (except some magenta/purple fringes I removed in post processing)? Bbobby, First, nice image of the solar corona (glowing atmosphere of the sun) during totality! Likely you've combined several e...

Friend and forum member Robert OToole has died. Robert-OToole-bio-pic-300px.jpg (Photo from www.robertotoole.com, which holds the copyright.) Robert posted here as "RobertOToole" for more than eleven years. He also authored and maintained the encyclopedic site closeuphotography.com , where he extens...