Taking into account the 1.5 magnification factor, the 60mm becomes a 90mm and the 100mm becomes a 150mm telephoto. You need to take into account the subjects you intend to shoot and the working distance you have. Personally I own four Nikon macro lenses (55, 60, 105, 200) and am hoping for a 35mm macro (becomes 52mm) so I don't have to shoot from so far away to do still lifes.

I love my 60mm it's a 2.8F and I'm hoping to get the newer D version of the lens.

Cheers
Lou
http://louisdallara.com

Is there a difference optically between the D and non D if they are both autofocus? Might your money be better spent on the 105mm macro.

Quote:
Taking into account the 1.5 magnification factor, the 60mm becomes a 90mm and the 100mm becomes a 150mm telephoto. You need to take into account the subjects you intend to shoot and the working distance you have. Personally I own four Nikon macro lenses (55, 60, 105, 200) and am hoping for a 35mm macro (becomes 52mm) so I don't have to shoot from so far away to do still lifes.

Larry, what would you recommend for taking photos of roses in the garden? I'd like to get in close to see the petals and folds. I've got a D70S.

I recently added a Nikon D200 body to the arsenal, and dusted off my 55mm MicroNikkor.

The results with spring flowers is nothing short of breath-taking. The cropping factor makes it equivalent to an 82.5mm. It means that I can not work as close as I like, but not a major problem - a lot of folks like somewhat long macro lenses.

Autofocus is actually a bit frustrating to use with macros, unless you use spot focusing. This is a manual focus lens and works superbly. Since it is manual, I expect that it would be available used at a very good price. Other than being a bit more focal length than I like, it is everything I could want in a a macro. The sharpness of this lens is legendary.

As a general purpose lens, it is nearly equivalent to an 85mm, which is a useful focal length.

Thanks!

I'll assume (since you're using it on the 200) that metering isn't an issue.

Sounds like a winner to me - that's exactly the type of shot I'm looking for.

I am delighted by how well the old lenses work on the D200. A menu item at the top of the user menu lets me tell the camera what lens is mounted, and one needs to be in either aperture priority or manual mode, but that is where I normally live anyway. When a lens is initially mounted, you also need to tell the camera what the maximum aperture is, and from there it remembers. Little more effort than changing lenses on the Nikon F3 for which the lenses were bought.

The 28mm preset PC-Nikkor is really not a happy combo with the D200, but I understand that later versions do work OK. None the less with a bit of effort, it DOES work as a straight 28mm lens. The shift feature does not work well at all.

I bought the new 18mm to 135mm DX zoom as a walkin' 'round lens, so that focal length is covered anyway. For a rather long zoom, it is quite impressive, however the prime lenses are clearly superior. In most normal sized prints, the difference would not be really that obvious. For carefully made photographs, shot off tripod and printed to large size, it would. Of course the zoom is slow - f-3.5-f-5.6 - while the primes are much faster. I find that I do not miss auto-focus at all with the primes.

Thanks Larry.

This D70S has jump started a re-interest in photography for me; years ago I shot quite a bit with a Minolta 700x and 370, but gradually lost interest. I gave the gear to my kids and I tried a few years ago to pick it up again with a Maxxum 5 and (later) an FM10 and just couldn't get the excitement started.

I picked up this D70S last summer and a copy of Elements and it's been fun ever since. Not that my photography has improved, but it's fun again.

Thanks for the info on the lenses - it's a bit more complicated than when I bought my first Olympus Pen FT half frame.

But it's fun!