I have been tuning out small problems with my macro setup. This photo was taken with only the 150mm Makro-Componon lens (made a long time ago in Germany by Schneider-Kreuznach). That lens has terrible trouble with internal reflections and flare, so I made some changes to how it is mounted:
I added a light shield at the front, a really long narrow one. That cuts down on the off-axis light entering the lens and reflecting off of elements within the lens.
I removed some portions of the tubing between lens and camera that had a flat, shiny interior. I replaced those with threaded tubing, and so much less light can reflect off the inside of the tube section.
The improvement in contrast was fairly dramatic, proven by the rich color and excellent fine detail in the image. I also used 60 images at very small steps, even though I suspected that ¼ of that would be at least adequate. A larger number of images with smaller steps tends to drive down small focus issues to nearly zero, and that helps a lot with a high-contrast subject like this one. It preserves rich colors and fine details.
I used a mix of flash and steady light on this one; I am having some issues with the flash units not firing some of the time. I modified the darker images that didn’t get flash during editing, increasing exposure by about a stop and a half. That’s a lot, but the Sony α1 camera’s sensor can handle it gracefully.