The lab group that shares our work space is trying to photograph some lighting that travels about the width of a hair at 1/1000 of a second. Bearing light, ISO, etc, they wanted to ask me (being the only photographer there) if it’s possible to get this without buying the $15,000 equipment that’s suggested. I set up some macro tubes at home, plucked a hair, taped it on my window, put my lens *right* against the glass, and this is as close as I could get:

The feedback seemed like this was close enough, but it got me curious – how much closer can you get without setting up a microscope? Do macro lenses get closer? The distance between lens and subject are the width of the plastic around the lens in this.