I have a slightly weird request for help: I am working in the biotechnology department at a university and we are growing fungal cultures on petri dishes and in Erlenmeyer flasks. In order to document their growth and morphology, we regularly take photos of them. We have bought a small photo box/light box for this to have even and bright lightening, but are using our smartphones right now. We would like to invest up to 1000 € in a camera/objective to get a much improved photo quality and especially get rid of the differences in quality between smartphones as comparability between photos is really important to us.
I have done some research and found that what we need is most likely a focus on makro photography. Especially the focus bracketing advertised for the Canon R7, 10, and 50 sounds very helpful. For price reasons, I am leaning towards the R50 right now. But I have absolutely no idea if the standard kit objective would be fine for our work or if we should rather go with a dedicated macro objective (and if so, which) or if one with a fixed focal length would be better. We do not need any zoom capability. Getting a small tripod to reduce camera movement would be unproblematic.
What we do need is a - once optimised - simply setup that everyone in the lab can use. We have neither the time nor the ability to adjust settings minutely for each picture.
Our petri dishes are about 1,5 cm high and 10 cm in diameter. The flasks are between 17 to 22 cm high and about 10 cm in diameter. I have attached a picture of a fungal culture in both of them to give you an idea, I hope that is ok. As you might be able to see, we also have a small problem with condension water/glare off the glass flasks decreasing our ability to clearly see the cultures. Any tips on how to avoid this are very welcome. Opening the dishes/flasks is not an option as we need sterile conditions for culture growth.
Any help would be very welcome. Sadly, none of my colleagues have any knowledge in photography and all 'normal' guides on camera choice are quite far away from our very specific application and thus not very helpful.
