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THE DIGITAL SOAPBOX OF ANDY CLEAVENGER

60mm AF D MICRO

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Email:  graycard18@gmail.com

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This is a wonderfully versatile little lens. Especially on a digital body with 1.5x crop.

Of Nikon’s macro lens lineup, this one is the smallest and easiest to hand hold. It can focus down to a distance of only a few inches and performs superbly at that distance. It also performs very well at regular distances, which makes it a great “walking around” lens that gives your DSLR a moderate telephoto effect in a very lightweight package.

If you’re into shooting macro and can only afford one lens, this is a good one to go with. You’ll find yourself using it for lots of other situations as well. If you want a good macro lens that will also double as a kick ass telephoto you might want to check out the 105mm.

One thing worth noting about this lens is that the extremely wide focus range can sometimes get you in trouble when using auto focus. If the lens decides it has to hunt for focus it can sometimes end up scanning its entire focus range (from infinity all the way down to 3 inches) until it decides it has found focus. This lens doesn’t suffer from this tendency as much as the 105mm, but it does still happen on occasion. I don’t really consider this a flaw, though since it’s an inevitable byproduct of the lens’ macro capability.

To deal with the issue (on both the 60mm and the 105mm) I keep the focus range switched to “limit” (notice the left side of the barrel in the photo above) when I’m using the lens at normal focusing distances. This essentially keeps the auto focus from hunting for focus all the way down to its minimum focusing distance.

To do macro work, you will have to switch the lens back to “full”. And I recommend turning auto focus off at that point. Auto focus won’t do you any favors when shooting macro.