Question is, do dirty lenses actually really matter or does overzealous cleaning do more harm than good. Ok nobody wants fingerprints, but a bit of dust isn't the end of the world.

I'd love to see some evidence of a 1.5 stop gain. That it gets the lens clean I can believe, but almost anything will do that.

Almost have the parts to get my new and improved macro rig working again, yay!

This was a little guy walking on an apple a couple of weeks ago... must be huge to him

I have made 4 in the last few weeks, and I'm in the middle of doing my 5th as we speak, just waiting on some parts. 1-3 were bracket & flash, 4 was on hotshoe & V will be on hotshoe + extension + swivelly thing. I've found 4 & 5 better because the flash is nearer the subject so you use less flash so it recycles faster, has a shorter duration etc etc etc. if V is a success I'll post a photo sometime

You can give yourself a coronary if you worry about every port scan alert on your box. Trust me there will be thousands daily, if you have a half decent firewall you'll be fine. Turn the alerts off and don't worry about it.

Fwiw, I personally get more detail in the eye with a reversed lens, tubes & flash than I ever get with any of my 3 macro lenses.

Flash, I think, is best, when you can't tell it's been used. Ie diffused on 1/16, 1/32. There is outstanding work both with and without flash.

The only macro lens I'd get now is MPE-65, but that's a different system. Most 'macro' lenses arn't actually even really macro, they're more like short distance teles.

Doesn't the lee wide angle hood with 150mm filter let you take @8mm?

I still have both 10-20 aspherical and 10-17 fisheye. Nice to have, but in truth the novelty of both wore off quite quickly.

10 stops is usually enough. Just remember the 30 rule, 1/30s exposure equates to a 30s with ND110 exposure. Often ND110s are a little off though, ie mine is actually closer to 11.

Multi exposure is all well and good but pants for greasy clouds really. Because you see stuttering, so instead of smooth clouds you see stops and starts.

Good advice above about buying for your largest thread. You can always use stepups to accomodate smaller ones. I have a b&w 77mm with stepups and that does me nicely for every lens I have that would use ND110.

If you're going to stack don't even bother trying the cheap Cokin range for colour photos. The colour cast is diabolical. Fine for B&W obviously

I think craneflies are actually horribly difficult subjects because they're so big and gangly, but their most interesting feature is their small iridescent eyes which of course you can't get in much detail if you shoot the whole bug So I think you have 2 choices for a nice cranefly shot, either an extreme macro on their eyes in particular which avoids distracting OOF areas, or their very distinctive silhouette against some edge. On the plus dide, these definitely capture some of the interesting eye colours. But there's also quite a lot of empty and distracting background.

I quite like Cambridge in colour