Of course, you can ditch the pixels in post, but then you loose dynamic range and ISO performance.

You'd not normally just ditch them, you'd bin them, improving high-ISO performance.

Mike, the PN105 is not optimized for infinity so I expect it would be terrible in a coupled arrangement. Both the reversed lens and the tube lens should be optimized for infinity, or close to it.

Mike, it does work but the effective aperture is pretty high. The PN105 at 1:1 would have an EA= 5.6, and then a 2x converter doubles that to f11. For me, on an MFT sensor, that will show diffraction.

1x-3x is the magnification range where coupled lenses could do well.

What beautiful things. The amblypygid with kids is especially amazing. I had never seen that before, though I knew scorpions did it. Your framing and composition on that picture is really good.

Good point Bill. For macro work, probably that effect is unimportant, but for scenery it might matter.

Since that occurs after the exposure, it has no effect on that photo, so most people don't care about it. I do because of my moveable subjects; the vibrations don't affect the present picture but do affect the next one.

My issue is with the shutter shock (whether before or after the exposure or both) can slightly vibrate and move the subject, especially if it in in liquid.

Regarding the Olympus, I second what Charles says about the silent shutter flash implementation. I use it all the time. And though it is only an MFT sensor, it can output 80Mp images in hi res mode (if there are absolutely no environmental vibrations) and these are sharper (though perhaps also noisi...

Just because focus stacking is not available in live view, that does not necessary mean it can not be used with the electronic shutter.

But Ray said

Nikon has enabled a fully-electronic shutter that operates only when the camera is in Live View mode

Anyway we'll soon know for sure.

hkv, I have serious environmental motion at times, so the flash helps enormously to sharpen the pictures. To get 1/4000 in continuous, highly diffused reflected light would be very difficult. Perhaps it would be acheivable with transmitted light but my subjects don't work with transmitted light. How...

I do not know if the UMNs are telecentric. I have not seen that mentioned in any of their specs, while it is prominently mentioned (and noticeable from ray diagrams) in Zeiss literature. As I understand it, Zeiss (or its subsidiary) rapidly out-competed Nikon in this field.

I forgot to mention that the Zeiss litho lenses are telecentric, so they are ideal for stitching.

It is amazing how Nikon always seems to just miss the boat on these details in recent years. In the film days it was Nikon which had the sensible professional tools and Canon that kept missing the boat on things like mirror lock-up.

Just stick a ruler in front of your lens and be done with it. The tests for detail can be done with other subjects.

On page 217 they discuss the focus shift (stacking) feature. It can not be used with live view

Well, that's $3500 I don't need to spend then.