Please advise regarding a MACRO Lens purchase.

[Whiskey1]

I have a newly purchased NIKON 5200 DSLR. I want a MACRO lens for taking close ups of small items such as coins, etc. and getting close on certain pieces of gear and equipment such as tools and machinery.

I was at Best Buy and noticed that they had 35, 40 & 50mm MACRO lenses.

Which would you recommend for my purposes and why?

Also, I was doing some research on MACRO lenses and read that the sensor size (3/4 or full [35mm]) has a lot to do with the MACRO lens that is selected.
I wasn't able to determine if my NIKON 5200 has a 3/4 or full sensor?

Thank you in advance for any input/advice.

 

[cgipson1]

I would recommend the Tokina 100mm macro , the Tamron 90mm macro. or the Nikon 105mm micro depending on your budget. You can also buy the lenses used... to save some money. You might also consider the Nikon DX 85mm... it is a nice lens also.

The shorter focal lengths (35mm, 50mm, 60mm) have much closer minimum focusing distances for maximum magnifications, which makes it more difficult to properly light the subjects without special macro flashes. Also if you ever decide to shoot insects, the short focusing distances make it difficult as they will spook and leave / hide.

Your D5200 has a APS-C crop sensor (DX)... not a full frame sensor (FX) APS-C - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For macro, The APS-C sensor has slightly increased DOF (depth of field) which is an advantage over an FX sensor. It will also give a FOV (Field of View) equivalent to 1.5 times the focal length you are using (i.e 100mm FL = 150mm FOV). you can safely ignore your sensor size for macro.. it will be transparent, and not really affect your shooting. How you light the subjects will have much more effect on your images, than sensor size will.

I would strongly advise avoiding any of the cheap screw-on macro filters... they seriously degrade IQ (Image Quality), although there are a few more expensive ones that do nicely (like the Raynox DCR-250) which can be used on a normal lens to give some macro capability. As do Extension tubes.

But for starting out... I do recommend one of the above actual macro lenses, for ease of use when learning. Feel free to check out my Flickr link below... to see if I know anything about Macro!