A play with the microstage

I borrowed my wife's camera and attached it to the clickstop. This works better than my Z2 as it's much lighter and the diagonal doesn't rotate in the extension tube (a bonus). Anyway, here's the camera in situ. I used the 17mm Hyperion as the exit pupil is bigger and this helped with the vignetting. The camera was zoomed to 3x (max optical) and is an Olympus FE5500. The 17mm Hyperion gives me about 30x and combined with the camera I think gives me about 90x. I folded the rubber cup down to make it easier to swing the camera into position.

Camera in position to take piccy

Camera in lowest position

Camera at half way point

Piccy of the fence at 90x (ish) using this setup.


This has some possibilities. I also bolted my Z2 onto the piggyback bolt on the tube rings, with it's 1.4x telephoto extended attached and took a photo on full auto (the camera focused on the fore ground stuff rather than the fence, but it gives some idea. I reckon this will work well on clusters at full zoom. The objective of the Telephoto is also 60mm instead of 35mm, so I ought to be able to gather more light and information in the images using it. I'm not sure my maths is correct here, but I make that something like about 65% more light grasp.

Of course, now all I need is the opportunity to use this stuff. When will the clouds go ?