Yes, oil doesn't induce osmotic effects just because it doesn't mix with water nor with most water soluble molecules like ions (as you most likely know osmosis is due to the movement of water, not of solutes) But this can induce unwanted interfaces...if you find an adequate oil please let us know. ...

Used optics like this a very much a crap shoot. If you are confident in your ability to accurately test objectives like this - and the seller offers returns - it might be worth the gamble.

This one looks better

Great composition!

The a7m3 has this weird shutter curtain luminescence leak issue that generates a load of hot pixels all to one side of the exposure. I've acquired 3 long exposures from that body and 2 of them has it, it does seen like a luck thing. Stay away from it if you plan to do long exposures Can you elabora...

Thank you all for the comments!

@Rik - your additional information was great! Thanks for that - I think it really helps understand why these scales are so fragile!

Personally I am very interested in this camera and would love to hear your thoughts on a few things: 1. I would be really interested to see what you find in 5X range with the pixel shift images compared to single frames at 10x and 20x. 2. What your thoughts are on the tethering solutions Sony provid...

Lately I've been doing a bunch of profile portraits of insect eyes and this little guy is one of the more impressive ones. The toughest part was the eye - which was dried out 6 ways from Sunday in the specimens I have. I used a small syringe in inject a few drops of warm DI water into the back of th...

Some of the mitutoyo clones have proven to be pretty decent (the wemacro 5x for instance), others much less so. Haven't seen any reviews of this type though they come up on eBay every now and then. Lower mag objectives tend to be more forgiving - a low NA 20x will be less so. For that price though ...

Meh. It's a Mitutoyo clone with worse specs. For that NA - the 10X/0.28 M Plan APO from Mitutoyo is a better option.

Lou Jost wrote:Nice edge-to-edge sharpness. What did you use as the tube lens?

Tube lens is a DCR-150

Wonderful use of the shallow depth of field!

Thank you all for the great feedback! It looks like I will be revisiting the illumination for this guy this weekend. There are 2 issues with the eye as Rik noted - the first is a line pattern projected by what I think is a flag I used to limit the flash on the background. I believe this is what crea...

Hi All, I want to solicit people's opinions here on what you think of the following images: The first is a portrait of a Blue Mud Dauber (Chalybion californicum) taken with reflected light. https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-wpZGMZ4/0/bfdcd9b2/O/i-wpZGMZ4.jpg The second image is the same stack - bu...

Regardless of the stacking software that you are using - you are likely to get unpredictable results without a tripod or some other stabilization platform. Reliable stacking requires axial stability more than lateral stability - so if your images are shifting right/left/up/down then they are likely ...