deanimator

One option is an old manual 35mm film lens, on cheap tubes without contacts, in normal orientation or reversed. This allows you to control the aperture without expensive adapters or kludges. I've ...

If you want to try macro without spending a lot of money, they're certainly good enough. Unless you have no money at all, I'd recommend that you get tubes with contacts so that you can control the ...

Thanks. It's actually macro.  It's quite small.

Don't I know it.  Bar NONE, this is the most difficult aspect of macrophotography for me.

Most of what I do is macro, and most of that is in the studio.  A good portion of that is with microscope objectives, or conventional lenses at greater than 1:1.

These days, photography with anything besides a cell phone is a "niche" Hell, from what I've seen, reading printed books is a niche.

If you're going to use microscope objectives, don't even think about it without stacking. I'm not sure why anybody would want a single image of a PAINFULLY thin in focus slice of an insect antenna.

Those are nice images. I use PVC because it's endlessly adaptable.  My camera and subject stage are on 80/20 beams and anything I use has to conform to that.

My intent was not that it should look like it just came out of the original packaging. It's a minimum of twenty years old, had sat around the apartment for that long, and that's how I wanted it to ...

Old computer memory module:

I actually have a home built light tent which I use for larger items (handguns, etc.). For the objectives, I'll stick to cut down styrofoam cups. This new diffuser seems ideal for items that fit on ...

Thanks. I decided to back off from the microscope objectives for a while, partially do to technical difficulties, but mostly due to a lack of worthwhile subjects. Falling back to 1:1 has allowed me ...

Canon T4i Tokina 100mm macro F5.6 1/200 ISO: 100 Wemacro, 175 images Flashpoint 300 strobe Zerene Stacker

It'll mostly be used on a 100+ pound table top macro rig, so that's not much of a consideration.

I bought my T4i refurbished.

That's much more of a possibility.

The 90D is too expensive, so it's off the table.

The same isopod shot at F5.6:

Canon T4i Tokina 100mm Macro Flashpoint studio strobe Wemacro rail Stack of 90 in Zerene