you know those sub-pinhead sized orange-red spidery things (mites?) that zoom around with incredible speed?
that's one of them, relaxing on a radiator
magnification 7:1 (cower, mortals!!! )
the viewfinder was so dark that i had to tape a led-light above it to be able to see enough to focus

the strange shadows that are not only under the legs, but also around the legs from the viewer's perspective and which look like i messed up touching up the background are original, i have no idea why

i tried a 7 frame shift-focus composite to increase the DOF, but gave up after 3 hours

the blur in all my macro shots is getting on my nerves
today i also made some makeshift extension tubes to use the inverted 50mm f/1.4 for higher magnifications, because i want to use a sharper lens for stuff like this, but for 4:1 i ended up with a half-meter construction that was collapse-prone, impossible to aim and incompatible with my macro flash tube

seems like there's no way around the Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro for quality high magnification shots, but wouldn't it spoil all the fun of trying?