Since first embracing studio stacked macro photos a few months ago, I've been working on technique and also trying to explore avenues to get to higher magnifications. So today's test is of the Otamat 10mm f1.7 microfiche reader lens. A few days ago I posted on tests with the Otamat 20mm f1.7 lens, including an image taken at 5.5x lifesized. For this exercise, I used the shorter lens (which of course means greater magnification on extension) and tried to push up to 8x lifesize.

Here is a portrait of a wasp (I think it is a Braconid Wasp) taken with the 10mm lens mounted on a pair of short extension tubes:

This photo has some obvious flaws, but its a big step forward from my few past attempts at this level of magnification, so I'll take encouragement from that.

Here's the full subject mounted on a pin with crazy glue (click on the iamge for a larger view): 

One interesting note - this stack was compiled in Photoshop CS6, not Zerene stacker. I initially stacked these images in ZS but was not satisfied with the results - lots of wierd artifacts in some areas of the image - and so I reverted to Photoshop. It did take many hours to stack just 50 images but the results were worthwhile.