What are Macro lenses?
A macro lens is a lens that is manufactured in a special way, to make the lens especially suitable for up-close photography. ‘Normal’, non-macro lenses are designed so the sharpness and contrast of the lens gets better the closer you focus to infinity. The thinking behind this is that most of the photos you take will be towards the end of the focusing range. With a macro lens, however, this is the other way around. Most macro lenses are quite good on the longer focal ranges, but they really excel on sharpness, contrast, and overall photo quality in the other extreme of the focus range! In practice, a macro lens means that you can take pictures at shorter focal distances than with ‘normal’ lenses. The most extreme macro lenses can focus down to 2 cm (approx 0.8 inch). these kinds of lenses are often found on digital cameras (in particular the models from Casio and Nikon), but this isn’t necessarily the best way forward for Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras. Instead, Macro lenses are usua
