I used Methylated Spirit, but not on the emulsion side.

I had just the opposite anomaly with my Nikon 180mm f/ 2.8 AF lens. After the click on the bayonet loading, a twist action in the reverse direction was needed ( to properly seat the lens.?) The inability to AF was the give-away warning that this pseudo reverse twist was necessary. One could not actually see movement of the lens with this action, but once learned, it became second nature to give it that twist (action).This happened back in pre Digital days.

My globe is 100mm as marked on the container. Wasn't offered any other size at 'The Magic Shop' when I bought it.

Of course, clouds can be the spoiler for many of the sky / planet /star shots. Here in the UK we seem to suffer greatly from this. Best of luck to all who will be trying.

Never have too much temperature trouble here in UK, but when I was doing Press work at indoor swimming competitions, I let the car heater warm up my equipment during travel. Would have taken thirty minutes acclimatisation otherwise.

I have more Nikkor lenses than Sigma lenses. I am happy with all of my Sigma lenses too especially the 150~ 600 c. Get really sharp results.

There might be a rush on J-Cloths, better stock-up now. You know how things can escalate LOL.

There are products available to divert the ink into a small container rather than have it soak into sponge pads. The container rests outside of the printer, and can easily be disconnected, emptied, rinsed out, and reconnected to the drain-off tube. Job done, and no mess to contend with. Glad I bought mine.

Sorry, No.

Try Ebay / Google to purchase 'Magic Bullet'. I almost gave up with Head cleans, Purging single colours. But persevere ...I did.

My Epson R3000 printer with re-fillable cartridges, stopped printing with Photo-Black, and Yellow inks. Simple Head -Clean routines did not improve matters. So I removed the two cartridges, flushed the lines of plastic tubes that carried the ink from the Cartridges, to the Print heads, with 'Magic Bullet'. Then injected the relevant inks into the plastic tubes. Strips of 'J' cloth were laid under the print head to soak up the liquids, as they were ejected. clean J-cloth soaked strips were left in situ under the print head overnight. These were then removed, and Head-clean and Nozzle check printout was performed. The results (Before and After),are shown below. All colours fully operational once again. I think a combination of air locks in the plastic tubes, and dried ink at the heads were the causes of the problem.

The filter I used with my Leica 111c came from some Laser equipment, according to the chap who gave it to me. Lost touch with him for a few years , so cannot enlarge further. Very dark, but gave good results.

When using the Kodak High-speed Infra-Red 35mm film, I got the best results using a very deep red filter(The chap who gave it to me said it came from some Military equipment.) I used the filter with the 35mm Leitz Summaron lens on my Leica 111c . Being a rangefinder camera, one did not view/focus through the lens/& filter. Therefore the filter stayed in situ throughout .Exposues varied around 1/100 @ f 8..11..& 16. Loading /unloading the camera with film, had to be done in Total Darkness. A doubly tricky job with the 111c. body. IR shots these days is 'Childs Play' (with digital) compared to the film only days.

Further to my earlier post, I have now got Yellow and PK Black ink running properly again. Thank goodness for 'Magic Bullet' product. I had to be very patient in the multiple unblocking / cleaning procedures. The R3000 is running like new at last.

I use a Canon Scanner. It has the facility to adjust crop-lines to the area wanted for copying / editing. Check the menus to see if the Epson has similar.