The beauty of buying a macro lens is that there are no bad ones. You could step outside the Nikon brand to Tamron, Sigma or even Vivitar and get an excellent Macro lens that will give you 1:1 ratio. You mentioned that you want to shoot flower stamen and bugs eyes. In order to do that you will need to go beyond 1:1 ratio. Canon makes the MPE 65 macro lens that will give 5X reproduction but unfortunately Nikon has nothing like this in their catalog. There are other ways to go about this. Since you want to go after bugs, you will want as much working distance as possible so a macro lens with a focal length of 180-200mm would give you more space between you and the bug and you will be less likely to scare the bug away. In addition you can use extension tubes to get closer, and or apochromatic diopters. These are closeup lenses with two elements thar don't give you the distortion of cheap one elment closeup lenses. Nikon used to make these. I'm not sure if they still do but if not Canon makes the 500D closeup diopters that will fit on many Nikon lenses. You can also buy a lens reversal ring and reverse a lens on your camera or buy adapter rings and put a reversed lens on the end of your macro lens.
all of these devices used alone or in combination will bring you closer and give you more magnification. Confusing right? O.K., what you really should do before you get into a specialized area of photography like macro is get a good macro book. There are many of them. Good luck.
|