I'm currently building my first spectrometer and have some questions to the more advanced builders out there:

1) I want to use a collimator lens to make the light beams entering the diffraction grating parallel. Do you have any experience with using a collimator? What kind would you use?

2) I want to use a collector lens in front of the slit to gain more light which is especially useful for faint light sources. Do you have any recommendations?

3) If you were to choose a webcam, what type of will you take? I'm asking because I have opened some of mine and they differ greatly in sensor size while providing roughly the same resolution. My guess would be that a greater sensor size is favorable.

Another thing that crosses my mind is the distance between slit an grating. In the common DIY design, there often is a huge distance between slit and grating. If I'm using a collimator in front of the slit, I supposedly could shorten that distance a lot. Do you think so as well?

Kind regards

Christian