Focus rail purchase
Moderators: ChrisR, Chris S., Pau, rjlittlefield
Focus rail purchase
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
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.
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