"Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

In my last post, I linked to the work of other photographers who were using focus stacking to show the magnified details of various objects that aren't normally visible to the naked eye. One image that I liked was the penny with popcorn salt on it. (Original thread with photographer credit; image) 

I did my own version of this and here's the result. I don't have the microscope objective that the other photographer used, so I can't get as close up, but I wanted to see how much magnification I could get out of my camera, lens, and lens accessories. 

Equipment used: 
Camera: Olympus E-M1 Mark II

Lens: Olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro lens

Extension Tubes: Meike 10mm + 16mm (similar to these)

Magnifying Lens: Raynox DCR-150 attached to lens with step-down rings

Tripod: Crummy one but it worked

The extension tubes extend the lens, giving a magnification side-effect, and the Raynox is basically a magnifying glass at the end of the lens. With the high magnification, the depth of focus was even smaller than the previous example I showed. 

Here's a shot from the middle of the stack. 

Here's the final image from the stacking software - it's 97 shots stacked. Did you know salt was cubular? I didn't. 

Before I took this series of photos, I tried a set with a penny with popcorn salt on it, like the original I'm trying to duplicate. That set of shots didn't turn out well because I bumped the table and moved the penny, but I learned that popcorn salt is actually shaped like tiny popped kernels! (Not really. It's cubes, too.)