Lense question

[icewoman]

They say there are no stupid questions but this may be one. Keep in mind I had a photography course in college and that was a mighty long time ago.

I have a Nikon D40 which I like. I purcharsed the Tamron 70-300 which I like as well. It does have the AF feature but I rarely use it. It is a telephoto macro zoom lense. Can someone tell me more about the " macro" part of this lense. My understanding of a Macro Lense is one that you take close up pictures with, like within inches....This does not seem to be the case with this lense. Help me understand the Macro feature on this lense please.

[Steve Foss]

icewoman, it's been a long time since I shot that lens and I don't own one anymore, so I'm going from memory.

But in general, a macro lens is simply a lens that is typical in all ways except its ability to focus closer than other lenses. So with your Tamron 70-300 in non-macro mode, the closest you can focus is about six feet. In macro mode (which your lens will only go into if it's zoomed to 180-300mm) you can focus to about three feet. Being able to cut your focus distance in half makes the subject much larger in the frame, thus the description "macro."

It's not a true macro lens because it won't focus ultraclose, but it focuses a lot closer than 70-300 zooms that aren't labeled "macro." A true macro lens will allow you focus with your front lens element only inches from the subject.

Hope that helps!

[icewoman]

Thank you. That is the line of thought that I had. Tonight I will experiment with taking the same picture in Macro mode and not and comparing the two. It seemed that I got a better picture and was able to crop and enlarge to a greater degree when I did not have the lense at full zoom, I am thinking that may change if I use the Macro setting>

Next will be taking the camera off " automatic" and setting my own settings.