Newbie question about macro with DSLR

Eric Smith wrote:
Paul Furman writes:
On the other hand, how much detail do you need?

I'd like to resolve details with a minimum feature size of 3 microns.

Defininately use a microscope with a camera adapter.

jue

Jürgen Exner wrote:
Eric Smith wrote:
Paul Furman writes:
On the other hand, how much detail do you need?
I'd like to resolve details with a minimum feature size of 3 microns.

Defininately use a microscope with a camera adapter.

jue

He does NOT need a microscope ... only a microscope objective
and some way to focus it.

As to focusing a microscope objective: the manufacturer specifies the
back focus ... that is, the distance from the mounting screw to were the
focal plane of the camera is. You just make sure that that distance is
about right, like within 5 mm. Then you focus by moving the subject, or
by small movement of the objective.

Doug McDonald

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:54:31 -0700, Eric Smith
wrote:

I'm considering buying a Canon Digital Rebel XSi for a project involving
macro photography, and I'm looking for advice regarding macro lenses,
reverse mounts, etc.

Basically I'm trying to photograph a flat subject such that an area
about 1 mm on a side will be full-frame. It would be better yet if
I could do that for an area 0.5 mm on a side.

The camera has an APS-C size sensor (22.2 x 14.8 mm).

I have a precision X-Y stage with stepper motors and microstepping
control, so I can position the subject in increments of less than
0.1 mm. I plan to take many photos with a small shift, and stitch them
together, probably using Hugin. Because I expect there to be a lot of
overlap between the images, I think I can tolerate some amount of
vignetting, spherical abberation, etc.

Is this feasible with some macro lens, combination of lenses, reversing
ring, extension tube, etc?

I'm hoping to avoid the need to buy a microscope and adapter, due to
the cost, though that's obviously an option. I'm not sure how to tell
whether a particular microscope would be suitable without trying it;
for instance, I've looked at a 7x-90x microscope, but apparently 10x
or 20x of that magnification is due to the magnification of the
eyepiece, which I wouldn't have with the camera adapter.

If I understand correctly, you need a magnification of around 10 to
20. By this I mean that the image size on the sensor of the camera is
10 to 20 times as big as what you are shooting.

I agree with some other posters that your best solution might be a
microscope.

You should also be able to achieve this by reversing an ordinary Canon
lens. A little background first... Lenses are designed to work best at
particular subject and lens extension distances... normally the
optimal subject distance is from infinity to around 10 times the focal
length, and this corresponds to a lens to sensor distance of
approximately the focal length plus a couple of millimeters.

To use an example, consider a "normal lens", which would be about 35mm
focal length for the Excess Eye (XSi). Depending in which lens
exactly, it will work great focused from infinity to about 300 mm from
the lens.

If you try to get closer by using extension rings, you will be able to
focus closer, but the optical quality starts to deteriorate a bit.
When you get so close that you are near 1:1 (image and subject about
the same size), image quality is worse, and continues to get worse as
you go greater than 1. To some extent you can manage by stopping down,
but that is of limited use.

The fix is to reverse the lens when you need to shoot well over 1:1.
Then the lens becomes happy again because its distances once again are
close to its ideal distances... except that everything is in reverse.
Thus the distance from the back of the lens to the subject is now
about the same as lens-sensor when shooting at normal distances, and
the distance from the front of the lens to the sensor is now around
300 mm or greater, which is about right for this lens. The light rays
don't mind going backwards.

To give some examples ---

You are shooting a pair of shoes or whatever with the lens mounted
normally. The distance to the subject is 400 mm. With that distance,
the magnification on the sensor will be m = 0.1, and the lens
extension is 3.4mm... so the distance from the center of the lens to
the sensor is 35 + 3.4 = 38.4 mm.

Now you reverse the lens using a reverse adapter, and shoot something
very tiny. The lens-subject distance is very close at 38mm, the
lens-sensor is racked out to 420 mm, and the magnification is now
11:1. The size of the subject will be about 2 mm. The numbers are
similar to above but reversed. Image quality should be great.

But depth of field will be very shallow, about 0.5 mm according to my
calculations. And lighting the subject will be tricky.

I'm guessing you will find it easier to use a microscope for this kind
of application, but reversing the lens is a cheap and potentially good
way to do it.

Archibald

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:37:54 GMT, Archibald
wrote:

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:54:31 -0700, Eric Smith
wrote:

I'm considering buying a Canon Digital Rebel XSi for a project involving
macro photography, and I'm looking for advice regarding macro lenses,
reverse mounts, etc.

Basically I'm trying to photograph a flat subject such that an area
about 1 mm on a side will be full-frame. It would be better yet if
I could do that for an area 0.5 mm on a side.

The camera has an APS-C size sensor (22.2 x 14.8 mm).

I have a precision X-Y stage with stepper motors and microstepping
control, so I can position the subject in increments of less than
0.1 mm. I plan to take many photos with a small shift, and stitch them
together, probably using Hugin. Because I expect there to be a lot of
overlap between the images, I think I can tolerate some amount of
vignetting, spherical abberation, etc.

Is this feasible with some macro lens, combination of lenses, reversing
ring, extension tube, etc?

I'm hoping to avoid the need to buy a microscope and adapter, due to
the cost, though that's obviously an option. I'm not sure how to tell
whether a particular microscope would be suitable without trying it;
for instance, I've looked at a 7x-90x microscope, but apparently 10x
or 20x of that magnification is due to the magnification of the
eyepiece, which I wouldn't have with the camera adapter.

If I understand correctly, you need a magnification of around 10 to
20. By this I mean that the image size on the sensor of the camera is
10 to 20 times as big as what you are shooting.

I agree with some other posters that your best solution might be a
microscope.

You should also be able to achieve this by reversing an ordinary Canon
lens. A little background first... Lenses are designed to work best at
particular subject and lens extension distances... normally the
optimal subject distance is from infinity to around 10 times the focal
length, and this corresponds to a lens to sensor distance of
approximately the focal length plus a couple of millimeters.

To use an example, consider a "normal lens", which would be about 35mm
focal length for the Excess Eye (XSi). Depending in which lens
exactly, it will work great focused from infinity to about 300 mm from
the lens.

If you try to get closer by using extension rings, you will be able to
focus closer, but the optical quality starts to deteriorate a bit.
When you get so close that you are near 1:1 (image and subject about
the same size), image quality is worse, and continues to get worse as
you go greater than 1. To some extent you can manage by stopping down,
but that is of limited use.

The fix is to reverse the lens when you need to shoot well over 1:1.
Then the lens becomes happy again because its distances once again are
close to its ideal distances... except that everything is in reverse.
Thus the distance from the back of the lens to the subject is now
about the same as lens-sensor when shooting at normal distances, and
the distance from the front of the lens to the sensor is now around
300 mm or greater, which is about right for this lens. The light rays
don't mind going backwards.

To give some examples ---

You are shooting a pair of shoes or whatever with the lens mounted
normally. The distance to the subject is 400 mm. With that distance,
the magnification on the sensor will be m = 0.1, and the lens
extension is 3.4mm... so the distance from the center of the lens to
the sensor is 35 + 3.4 = 38.4 mm.

Now you reverse the lens using a reverse adapter, and shoot something
very tiny. The lens-subject distance is very close at 38mm, the
lens-sensor is racked out to 420 mm, and the magnification is now
11:1. The size of the subject will be about 2 mm. The numbers are
similar to above but reversed. Image quality should be great.

But depth of field will be very shallow, about 0.5 mm according to my
calculations. And lighting the subject will be tricky.

I'm guessing you will find it easier to use a microscope for this kind
of application, but reversing the lens is a cheap and potentially good
way to do it.

Archibald

Here's a link to a web site of someone who has adapted a bellows to a
Canon for macrophotography -- check out the link at the bottom too.

http://www.ganymeta.org/~darren/photo_bellows.php

Archibald

Eric Smith wrote:
I'm considering buying a Canon Digital Rebel XSi for a project involving
macro photography, and I'm looking for advice regarding macro lenses,
reverse mounts, etc.

You are getting a lot of wonderful information... almost
all of which is correct, but totally useless for your
needs!

Given what you have said you want to photograph, you
CANNOT do it with typical "macro" techniques.

Basically I'm trying to photograph a flat subject such that an area
about 1 mm on a side will be full-frame. It would be better yet if
I could do that for an area 0.5 mm on a side.

The camera has an APS-C size sensor (22.2 x 14.8 mm).

Okay, that means between 14.8:1 and 29.6:1 magnification.

To put it simply: You can't do that with a macro lens on
a DSLR.

You need a microscope. You might also want to look at
other types of cameras, because while it can be done
with a DSLR that may not be the most reasonable in terms
of either convenience or price.

I have a precision X-Y stage with stepper motors and microstepping
control, so I can position the subject in increments of less than
0.1 mm. I plan to take many photos with a small shift, and stitch them
together, probably using Hugin. Because I expect there to be a lot of
overlap between the images, I think I can tolerate some amount of
vignetting, spherical abberation, etc.

Do you want _each_ image to be even higher magnification
than stated above, and for the resulting final product
to be as described above???? Or do you mean each
exposure will capture 0.5 to 1.0 mm of a larger object?

If you mean that each exposure will capture 1mm of an
object, then a typical dissecting microscope would be
appropriate (and would be very convenient to mate with
your X-Y state). Another possibility is a toolmakers
metallurgical microscope.

If the total object is 1mm, you need even greater
magnification. In that case the metallurgical
microscope is what you'll need. And even if you want
1mm portions of a larger object, you might want to look
at this technique anyway, as it offers more flexibility
than a dissecting scope.

The feature you'll want to look for is the ability to
mount it in a way that you can use your X-Y stage (which
is not true of all metallurgical scopes). Another
feature, which is almost universal though there is a
chance you don't need it, is episcopic (or "epi" for
short) illumination. That uses a beam splitter to
illuminate the object through the same optical path that
you view it. (That is probably _very_ useful to you.)

Metallurgical microscopes also use special objective
lenses that allow a greater lense to object distance.

Microscopes can be very expensive, but it is unlikely
that you need a fancy one. It should be fairly easy to
find an older used model that will do fine. They often
are available on eBay at reasonable prices, as are the
parts and pieces such as objectives and "relay lenses"
for photography. Keep in mind that objective lenses are
matched to the eye pieces (and to the relay lenses used
for projecting into a camera), and hence should not
necessarily be mixed and matched between manufacturers.

Is this feasible with some macro lens, combination of lenses, reversing
ring, extension tube, etc?

I'm hoping to avoid the need to buy a microscope and adapter, due to
the cost, though that's obviously an option. I'm not sure how to tell
whether a particular microscope would be suitable without trying it;
for instance, I've looked at a 7x-90x microscope, but apparently 10x
or 20x of that magnification is due to the magnification of the
eyepiece, which I wouldn't have with the camera adapter.

This is a *large* topic, which will take a good deal of
research for you to get a handle on the perspective.
Here is a set of tutorial articles on photography through
a microscope:

http://www.microscopyu.com/articles/...ing/index.html

One thing to note is that due to the optical limitations
of a microscope, the resolution of photographed images
is limited. The practical effect is that high
resolution cameras are *not* necessary, and might even
be less useful! A very fancy DSLR is not going to get
any better an image that some of the nicer, much less
expensive, webcam's available! And adapting/using a
web cam with a microscope may be much less expensive and
easier to operate than mounting a DSLR on the same
scope! In the end, the images are not different.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

lid wrote:
Jürgen Exner wrote:
Eric Smith wrote:
Paul Furman writes:
On the other hand, how much detail do you need?
I'd like to resolve details with a minimum feature size of 3 microns.
Defininately use a microscope with a camera adapter.
jue

He does NOT need a microscope ... only a microscope objective
and some way to focus it.

He needs a microscope. In addition to the objective and
focusing mechanism, he needs a "projection" (aka
"relay") lense appropriate for the sensor size.

One additional feature that would be nice is episcopic
illumination.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:41:18 -0800, (Floyd L.
Davidson) wrote:

The feature you'll want to look for is the ability to
mount it in a way that you can use your X-Y stage (which
is not true of all metallurgical scopes). Another
feature, which is almost universal though there is a
chance you don't need it, is episcopic (or "epi" for
short) illumination. That uses a beam splitter to
illuminate the object through the same optical path that
you view it. (That is probably _very_ useful to you.)

Floyd, I was a dealer for Zeiss microscopes for 30 years. I've been
to the Zeiss facilities in Germany. I've sold hundreds of microscopes
and beam splitters. The beam splitter splits the optical path. It's
used to provide a view for a second observer or for photography. The
field of view is illuminated coaxially with the prime viewer
completely independent of the beam splitter. The observer or camera
is seeing the same field of view as the prime viewer, and that field
is illuminated.

The prefix "epi" means "above". There are two types of episcopes:
one projects light from above for surface viewing, and the second -
and the most common use of "episcope" - is a device that projects an
image using a mirror.

An overhead projector is an episcope. The kind most of us are
familiar with, though, is:
http://www.stds.fr/boutique/images_p...-AR225-481.jpg When
we were kids, we used these to project an image - usually the comic
pages - on a piece of paper taped to the wall - so we could trace over
it.

Microscopes can be very expensive, but it is unlikely
that you need a fancy one. It should be fairly easy to
find an older used model that will do fine. They often
are available on eBay at reasonable prices, as are the
parts and pieces such as objectives and "relay lenses"
for photography. Keep in mind that objective lenses are
matched to the eye pieces (and to the relay lenses used
for projecting into a camera), and hence should not
necessarily be mixed and matched between manufacturers.

I can't figure out what you're saying here, and I'm pretty familiar
with microscopes. I have no idea what "relay lenses" are. There are
two ways to photograph through a microscope: (1) You attach a camera
body to a port of the beam splitter. (2) You attach a camera body in
place of an eyepiece. Some microscopes have built-in beam splitters
with a single port, and some use a beam splitter that goes between the
microscope body and the binoculars.

I don't know what you mean by matching objective lenses to eyepieces.
Naturally you have to have compatibility of manufacturer, but a
microscope can be set up with several combinations of objective lenses
and eyepieces. The combination determines the viewer's magnification
and the field of view.

I haven't been able to figure out, from the postings I've read, if he
even really needs a camera body. There are systems available that
send the image direct to a computer, and the computer captures the
image.

He might be able to work with an instrument like the digital boom
microscope at
http://www.microscope.com/omano-ezvu...ope-p-194.html
because it doesn't appear that he needs to view the field through
eyepieces at all. This would provide 7x to 45x magnification, or up
to 90x with the Barlow lens. It could swing over his stage.

I have no idea about the re-sale aspect of this type of instrument,
but he could check with the company and see if an arrangement could be
made. They may buy back the instrument at an agreed-on price if they
can re-sell it.

While $1,700 seems like it's over his budget, he'd might be spending
$1,000 on a camera system with macro accessories that doesn't do what
he wants done.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:21:15 -0800, (Floyd L.
Davidson) wrote:

wrote:
Jürgen Exner wrote:
Eric Smith wrote:
Paul Furman writes:
On the other hand, how much detail do you need?
I'd like to resolve details with a minimum feature size of 3 microns.
Defininately use a microscope with a camera adapter.
jue

He does NOT need a microscope ... only a microscope objective
and some way to focus it.

He needs a microscope. In addition to the objective and
focusing mechanism , he needs a "projection" (aka
"relay") lense appropriate for the sensor size.

I'm still trying to figure out what you mean by a "relay lens".
Projection is done with a prism and not with a lens. A beam splitter
projects the optical view by bending it with the prism. The type of
prism, and the distance between the prism and the sensor, determines
what the sensor records.

One additional feature that would be nice is episcopic
illumination.

OK, I figured this out. You are evidently talking about light
projected from above the field as opposed to light projected from
below the field. I have no idea why you want to call it "episcopic",
though. "From above" works fine.

Some lab microscopes have illuminated stages (light from below) so the
light illuminates the material on the slide. Some have light
projected down to the stage from either a coaxial system or fiber
optic ring light. Some use both.

If his object - the thing he's photographing - is opaque, he *must*
have light from above. Not "nice", but essential.


--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

Eric Smith wrote:
If I buy an objective lens for a microscope, do you have any recommendations
as to mounting it? How do I determine how far from the sensor it should be
mounted? (Maybe I need to go back to school to study optics!)

Mount it to a toolmaker's metallurgical microscope frame.

he just need the objective
and some sort of illumination system. Olympus makes, or at least used to make,
the best equipment for this.

I've looked at the Olympus site, and am somewhat lost. If it's not too
much trouble, can you give me any more specific idea as to what I'm looking
for?

Olympus makes good equipment. So does Nikon. Oddly
enough, for your purposes it will probably be best to
look at some fairly old used equipment, including
Unitron.

The Olympus webpage has much good info, and these are a
couple to start with:

http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/faq.html

This one is long with lots of general information:

http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/microscopy.pdf

Do read the whole thing, but first you might want to check these
two sections:

page 22, "Reflected Light Microscopy"
page 37, "Digital Photomicrography"

Here is another very useful URL which discusses selection
of projection lenses for photomicography:

http://krebsmicro.com/relayDSLR/relayoptics1.html

This URL will help with general photomacrography information
and with the terminology and has a chart of abbreviations:

http://www.dyerlabs.com/microscopy/special.html

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

tony cooper wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:41:18 -0800, (Floyd L.
Davidson) wrote:

For the OP, don't get sidetracked by Tony and I discussing
all this techie crap at the beginning of this article. Go
down to the end, if you didn't do so when you read Tony's
article to start with, and check out the URL he provided
for an example camera/microscope combination.

It appears to be the perfect match!

The feature you'll want to look for is the ability to
mount it in a way that you can use your X-Y stage (which
is not true of all metallurgical scopes). Another
feature, which is almost universal though there is a
chance you don't need it, is episcopic (or "epi" for
short) illumination. That uses a beam splitter to
illuminate the object through the same optical path that
you view it. (That is probably _very_ useful to you.)

Floyd, I was a dealer for Zeiss microscopes for 30 years. I've been
to the Zeiss facilities in Germany. I've sold hundreds of microscopes
and beam splitters. The beam splitter splits the optical path. It's

Yes, that it does. Typically one path has a light
attached, and the other has an eyepiece. That is how
epi-illumination is typically provided.

used to provide a view for a second observer or for photography. The

That is, also, a not uncommon use for a beam splitter;
but does not negate the fact that episcopic illumination
is also done with a beam splitter.

field of view is illuminated coaxially with the prime viewer
completely independent of the beam splitter.

The coaxial illumination is done with a beam splitter,
that is entirely distinct from another beam splitter
used to provide a camera port, or another beam splitter
used to provide binocular viewing! There are beam
splitters galore!

The observer or camera
is seeing the same field of view as the prime viewer, and that field
is illuminated.

The observer/camera is not looking at the illuminator
though, which is the reason for using a beam splitter.


viewing eye
V
| (beam splitter)
|/
/
aligning eye ====/ ==== light source
/ |
|
objective lense


The light source shines into the beam splitter from the
right side, and is split between one path going down
(through the objective lense) to light the object being
viewed and a path that goes straight through to the
"aligning eye". Some designs actually have a port that
can be visually observed to align the beam splitter and
the light source, but most do not and just block that
path.

Light which reflects from the object being viewed shines
upward into the beam splitter and is also divided into
two paths. One goes straight upwards towards the
"viewing eye" and the other shines into the light source
port (where it is useless of course).

The prefix "epi" means "above". There are two types of episcopes:

The prefix "eip" means

"A prefix, meaning upon, beside, among, on the
outside, above, over. It becomes ep-before a vowel, as
in epoch, and eph-before a Greek aspirate, as in
ephemera"

Note that "episcopes" is a different word than
"episcopic".

Regardless, epi-illumination is so called because the
source of illumination is generally above the object
being viewed, rather than below it as with transmitted
light microscopy.

(I see in a second post from you that this has been
figured out. Do note that I did not choose the
terminology, it standard terminology that the OP will
need to be familiar with if he chooses to research this
topic farther. Also note that while epi-illumination
via the microscope is one method to provide reflected
light illumination, it isn't the only one. Hence I said
it is likely to be very useful, but might not be. With
"dissecting" style microscopes it is more common to see
ring lights and various forms of fiber optic
illuminators.) If some particular light shading is
necessary or useful to make the images show topographic
detail better, it might not be epi-illumination that
works best.

one projects light from above for surface viewing, and the second -
and the most common use of "episcope" - is a device that projects an
image using a mirror.

Do you see the connection with epi-illumination?

An overhead projector is an episcope. The kind most of us are
familiar with, though, is:
http://www.stds.fr/boutique/images_p...-AR225-481.jpg When
we were kids, we used these to project an image - usually the comic
pages - on a piece of paper taped to the wall - so we could trace over
it.

Wonderful, but with no significance to the OP or too my
discussion.

Microscopes can be very expensive, but it is unlikely
that you need a fancy one. It should be fairly easy to
find an older used model that will do fine. They often
are available on eBay at reasonable prices, as are the
parts and pieces such as objectives and "relay lenses"
for photography. Keep in mind that objective lenses are
matched to the eye pieces (and to the relay lenses used
for projecting into a camera), and hence should not
necessarily be mixed and matched between manufacturers.

I can't figure out what you're saying here, and I'm pretty familiar
with microscopes. I have no idea what "relay lenses" are.

That is an alternate term for "projection lense". Some
might also call it a "camera lense" or a "photo lense",
but those would be very rare. It replaces the ocular
on a normal microscope when a camera is to be attached
rather than a human observer.

Here is a URL that I gave previously. It goes into
detail.

http://krebsmicro.com/relayDSLR/relayoptics1.html

There are
two ways to photograph through a microscope: (1) You attach a camera
body to a port of the beam splitter. (2) You attach a camera body in
place of an eyepiece.

No, the camera body is not usually "in place of an
eyepiece", though that can be done, it is rare. It is
in _addition_ to *changing* the "eyepiece" (the ocular
lense) to a projection (aka relay) lense. Otherwise the
image will not likely "cover" the camera's sensor in a
useful manner at the same point where the image is also
in focus on the sensor.

See the above URL. It's a complex subject.

Some microscopes have built-in beam splitters
with a single port, and some use a beam splitter that goes between the
microscope body and the binoculars.

I don't know what you mean by matching objective lenses to eyepieces.
Naturally you have to have compatibility of manufacturer, but a
microscope can be set up with several combinations of objective lenses
and eyepieces. The combination determines the viewer's magnification
and the field of view.

There are at least two ways that oculars need to be
matched to the objectives. One is due to dependency on
the length of the tube and the other is to match
compensation for optical aberration between the ocular
and the objective lenses.

Older microscopes were all based on a specific tube
length, and the objective lenses are matched to that
length (typically 160mm but sometimes a bit more or
less). It can be a problem if an objective designed for
a 160mm tube is used on a 210mm tube, for example. And
modern microscopes are all designed for an "infinite"
tube, which allows any length of tube to be used, but
also requires that the objective and the ocular be
matched. (The purpose is to allow addition of multiple
optical devices into the optical path without changing
the objective or ocular lenses. Again, they do need to
be matched though, so only accessories from the same
manufacture are likely to work together.)

The second manner in which the objective and ocular
lenses need to be matched is in regard to the
compensation for optical aberration. Typically,
oculars that have a 'C' or a 'K' in the designator are
"compensating" oculars. For example, Zeiss KPL oculars
have -1.4% compensation while Leitz uses -0.75% and
Olympus used -0.7%. Nikon, near as I can tell, tended
to use 0%, but I've never fully been able to confirm
that. Whatever, it is clear that mixing oculars and
objectives of those manufacturers will degrade the
optics of a microscope.

I haven't been able to figure out, from the postings I've read, if he
even really needs a camera body. There are systems available that
send the image direct to a computer, and the computer captures the
image.

He might be able to work with an instrument like the digital boom
microscope at
http://www.microscope.com/omano-ezvu...ope-p-194.html
because it doesn't appear that he needs to view the field through
eyepieces at all. This would provide 7x to 45x magnification, or up
to 90x with the Barlow lens. It could swing over his stage.

I have no idea about the re-sale aspect of this type of instrument,
but he could check with the company and see if an arrangement could be
made. They may buy back the instrument at an agreed-on price if they
can re-sell it.

While $1,700 seems like it's over his budget, he'd might be spending
$1,000 on a camera system with macro accessories that doesn't do what
he wants done.

Bingo. You've hit what the OP needs dead on!

At least, it sure looks like it. That assumes there is
no other, unmentioned, need for a DSLR. I can't see how
it can be done better for less money if new equipment is
purchased.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)