It's that way with every subject I can recall getting into. After a while, if I'm lucky, my understanding converges to "here's a simple model that's pretty good" and "here are some gory details not captured by the simple model". For optics, I'm still going through that process. Trust me, you're doing fine!georgedingwall wrote:The more I get into this subject the more complicated things seem to get.
No, I don't think there is an "ideal lens".georgedingwall wrote:If you were put on the spot, what would you say is the best lens I could get for my sort of set up. I get about 8 to 1 magnification on the D200's 23.6mm sensor as a maximum if I use all of my accessories. Is there an ideal lens that would work best for this magnification, assuming money was not a limiting factor.
Go back to my mini-report posted here. I tested 4 lenses that might reasonably be used at 10:1 (more precisely, to image a 2.3mm subject width). Those lenses are a 10X microscope objective, a 16mm Luminar, and the 20mm and 38mm Olympus. They span quite a wide range of delivered resolutions (as illustrated in the mini-report). But based on other considerations, I can easily imagine using any one of the four for a particular subject.
From what I've seen of your tests, my guess is that no camera or enlarger lens is going to do much better than what you currently have. Based on my tests, I think there's a good chance that switching to a microscope objective would get you a lot more resolution. That comes at the cost of smaller DOF = deeper stacks, some less pleasant handling of OOF features (especially bright spots), and no feasible mechanism to adjust aperture. Lots of downsides, but the objective could significantly broaden your range of capabilities, where another camera or enlarger lens will not.
--Rik