Hi Matt
I spent ages researching all this last year and a lot depends what you want the macro for.
If its for occasional use then any good lens with the camera set to macro will give you good results.
If you are using it a lot, then its worth geting a specific macro lens.
My Dad (who is the photographer in the family) Always says get as big and as good a piece of glass as you can afford. Preferably with a low F stop designation.
I evetually bought a Tamron 60mm fixed f2.0 lens for mine as i use it a lot on a tripod for flies,bugs etc. and i think the Tamron is brilliant
and it works exceptionally well for portraits as well, this is the beauty of a fixed lens, you get much better quality glass for your money. It is very light and it gets more use than i ever expected.
I also have a 18-200 VrII f3.5-5.6 Zoom lens which is not as impressive as i thought it would be. It is a brilliant lens but not as much of an increase in quality from my original 18-135 f3.5-5.6 kit lens as i expected, certainly not worth the money it has tied up in it. The kit lens was actually much better at macro than the new zoom, which is why when i upgraded to the zoom i bought a specific Macro lens.
If i could do it again, i'd still get the Macro lens, but would have to think very carefully about which size of zoom i'd go for, I'd probably keep the kit lens and go for a much cheaper 70-300 type lens for the odd occasion i use it. Or try and stretch for a 24-120 f4 and get a proper quality piece of glass. Hard to justify though
It can also depend what brand of camera you are using, I use Nikon for SLR's i prefer the button layout (probably the only reason i don't have a canon
)
Worth spending some time researching first what you need, lots of review sites out there.
Sandy
