I'm Jessica. I've been a beginner macro photographer for about 4 years now. About that time I became fascinated with the smallest blossoms I could find, usually those from weeds and grasses. The reason I call myself a beginner is because I have a bunch of lower end and homemade equipment that I use for most of my shots. Unfortunately, my results reveal my humble methods. Regardless, it is what I have to work with. I'm hoping that you all might be willing to offer me some advice in order to improve my output.
First off let me tell you about my kit. I shoot with a Canon t2i running Magic Lantern, an EFS 18-55 lens, and a collection of dumb extension tubes. Since I have no aperture control through the inexpensive tubes, I use a laser-cut black paper disc with a 5mm hole cut into it for my aperture. I use a home built focusing rail that gives me about 8cm of travel in approximately .02mm steps. For stacking I predominantly use Photoshop CS5.5 but I've recently started playing with Helicon and Zerene as well. That said, I tend to have my best results with Photoshop and a bunch of manual clean-up.
Regarding the paper aperture, the 5mm hole size seems to give me the best results. I've tried larger but the resulting blurring of foreground elements seems to confuse all of the software products mentioned above. I've also tried manually setting my lens aperture to the recommended f8~f11 range with the same results. Before I learned about pinhole diffusion I had also tried very small aperture sizes (<1mm) with the expected results.
For lighting I usually use a collection of single LEDs on pose-able wire arms that let me nicely configure a dramatic lightscape for my images. I can use these as spots, backlights, floods, and more, and they really help my subjects pop nicely. I much prefer the look I get using this method to other, more diffuse light sources. I have bounced a flash now and then, but the LEDs are my go-to solution.
When I do a shoot I usually take 50 to 100 images at around .2mm steps going front to back through my subject. This has given me some lovely results. After trying to educate myself so as to improve my process I've recently changed things up a bit. For one of my more recent experiments I took 350 images at .02mm steps using the lenses own aperture set to f8. My final results were rubbish after processing with all three modes from Helicon and both modes in Zerene. I could probably get something from Photoshop but my initial processing didn't look any better than my original process using fewer images. I am totally confused by this. It was my assumption that using an "optimal" f-stop and a 10x smaller step size I would be able to get substantially better results. The opposite seems to be the case.
What suggestions do you all have? I'm posting two images for your consideration. That said I'm a little self conscious after looking at the amazing results you all come up with.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Tossing out all my old kit and buying new isn't an option at this time. Now, I would be happy to take on any old cast-off equipment that you might have lying around... *grins*
Thanks in advance,
Jessica

