Focus rail purchase

Just bought that first macro lens? Post here to get helpful feedback and answers to any questions you might have.

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Houdini87
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2019 11:22 am
Location: Italy

Focus rail purchase

Post by Houdini87 »

Hi everyone, I was thinking to start doing good focus staking, to buy a rail, what do you advise me to buy? A manual rail, are there any valid ones? An automatic rail? I don't know, I hope someone can help me

ChrisR
Site Admin
Posts: 8662
Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:58 am
Location: Near London, UK

Post by ChrisR »

Hi H87
The Wemacro, as you mentioned in this thread https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php would be good for your "very small threads", if you mean a field of view of around 5mm (4x), up to much higher magnifications.

AT 4x with a modest microscope objective, you will get alarmingly (probably!) little depth of field. It'll be something like 50 microns. 1/20th of a millimeter. So if your subject is say 3mm deep you'll need something like 60 images, to focus-stack. That's to get all the quality you can. If you only need small pictures, eg for web use, you can do it with far fewer images in the stack.
You could , instead of the microscope objective, use a good enlarger lens reversed, such as the Schneider Componon-S0mm f/2.8.
The quality is a little below the same-price objective, but they are mor versatile.
60 is a very doable number of exposures, manually, until you get it wrong and need to start again, 3 or 4 times ;)
Then you'll be very glad if you have an automatic rail.

However if you search the forum for ideas you will find a lot.
Check the FAQ section, expecially the second post on "how to focus".

Y0u will possibly aalso need an extra flash unit, perhaps a Godox. You will usually need flattyer lighting than you expect. Diffusers , eg paper, are cheap but it's easier if you have more than one light.

DO start using flash. Otherwise you will almost certainly be plagued with vibration problems.
Chris R

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