[masraum]

Originally Posted by slakjaw

I've decided to move up from point and shoot cameras to the world of SLRs. After way too much research, I went to the store intending to buy the Pentax Kx, long story short I walked out with the Nikon D5000 it just seemed like a better choice for a starter camera lots of Scene modes as well as fully manual… it came with two lenses an 18-55 and a 55-200. I am interested in playing around with some close up stuff and I want to get a macro lens. There is a Sigma 70-300 F/4-5.6 APO DG Macro local to me for ~150.00

So what would be a good Macro lens for this camera? I do not mind manual focus. In fact I kind of prefer it and have been shutting the auto focus off.

I've got the Sigma 70-300 APO DG. I did a lot of research before I bought it. It seems to be a very good lens for the price. I've done some macro stuff with it. It's a half size macro. A full macro lense (that'll probably run more than $150 will probably be a full life size macro. Lots of folks will actually use extension tubes (I think Kenko is a popular brand) to do macro photography. A set of extension tubes and the Nikon equivalent of the nifty 50 (inexpensive 50mm lens) would probably also be a good choice for macro work.

The nice thing about the 70-300 is that you also have a fairly long telephoto (200mm always seems a little too short), and because its apochromatic, you can take cool pictures of the moon and stars (if it's not apo, then you will probably end up with blue rings around stars).

I guess it really depends upon how serious you want to get about macro stuff. If you really want to get hardcore into it and you're willing to spend the $$, then I'd get a more dedicated life size macro lens.

I think the 70-300 is a good low priced lens. You get the macro and the telephoto both taken care of for a really good price. THen later if you decide you want to delve more heavily into telephoto stuff or macro stuff, then you can buy one of the $500-1000 lenses.