This is a BD lens designed for coaxial lighting. Did you block the rear light openings? This is necessary otherwise you have strong straylight in the optical path.

regards
Hermann

Great series!

Wow, incredible detail!

Very nice series, especially 2 and 3!

Tropaeolum is one of our common garden plants, they are pretty and the flowers have a nice taste too :-)

Shot with D7100 and reversed El-Nikkor 50 on bellows @ about 2:1. Stacked from 24 images with Zerene Stacker.

Fantastic image indeed!
Very good retouching work too!
I think it will work nicely as a wallpaper too...

Hermann

Peter M. Macdonald wrote:That is interesting. Here in Britain the common name for this organism is Tar Spot Fungus.

Well, so we have the same thinking :-)

At the moment most of the leaves of the maple trees in my neighbourhood are infested by rhytisma aceri fungus causing black dots surrounded by a yellow band. In Germann this is called "Teerfleckenkrankheit" which meens something like "tar spot desease". This is a detail of one of those dots. Nikon C...

Yes, a very well chosen composition!

Very beautiful!
I especially like the colours and compositions.
Which objectives did you use?

Hermann

Fantastic depth and structures. Very fine work!

Really impressive series of images!

Wonderful colour and texture!

I think these are very nice stacks!

regards
Hermann

Thanks Rik and Chris! I already tried to enhance contrast and clarity in the hazy parts which gave quite a bit better results especially in 1:1 screen viewing.
The idea with lowering NA seems to be a good idea for subjects like this one. I'll try in the next days and report.

Best regards
Hermann