Experiment Inexpensive aluminum macro tubes (I bought the PHOTODIOX brand WITHOUT the camera digital contacts). This means NO APERTURE control, and manual focusing only. You can see that you have very low depth of field in the bottom three shots. I read about an aperture trick (you set the aperture, then click on the aperture lock, and unscrew the lens while the camera is live and add the macro tubes). In theory this may attract dust to sensor, so not sure about doing it frequently. Used that on the dime, but it was also on a fairly flat plane.
Tripod is mandatory for these, as you sometimes have to take longer exposures as you get extremely close (could have tried new LED hardware store floods, but instead played around with available window daylight).
Will have to try future tests with strobes and constants.