Wanted to buy a good macro lens?

I'm having D90 which I bought last month as per good suggestion received from you people. Now I wanted to buy any one of the menttioned lens for macro / portrait photos. 1. Tamron SP AF 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 2.AF NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8D from Nikon. At present bit confursed about these two lenses. Could you please suggest me good one among these. If not please let me know about some other lenses which serves the purpose.

The 50mm f/1.8D is not a macro lens.

50mm f1.8 is a regular prime lens, not a macro. The Tamron will do you fine. It's a good length on the D90 sensor, and fast at 2.8 and the image quality is good.

http://www.photozone.de/...ew?start=2

http://www.nikonians.org/html/resources/non-nikon_articles/tamron/90_macro/index.html

Sounds like someone needs to do some basic research on lenses, then you don't embarrass yourself…

personally i use the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens on my Sony A200… But there are other better, AND expensive macro lenses…

read the reviews on the www.dpreview.com website…

though you can use a 50mm f/1.8 lens with bellows for macro photography…

As has already been said the 50mm f1.8 is not a Macro lens, it won't focus as close as a Macro lens will.

There are Macro lenses in 50mm to 150mm, the difference is in how close you are to the subject. When set to 1:1 (life-size) something that is 1cm long will be 1cm long on your sensor, with the 50mm Macro lens you will be around 2 Inches away with the 150mm around 18 Inches away. The further away you are allows you to get some light onto your subject, you are out of the 'Radar' range of any insects so they just sit there, but the extra distance also magnifies any camera movement, so something in between is better.

90mm is good as is 105mm.

Tamron are good optically (they all are) but not good build quality, Sigma is better as is Nikon. The extra money is in the build quality no so much the optical quality.

I have only ever known 2 lenses fail mechanically (the auto focus gears (plastic) stripped), both were Tamron.

Personally I like Sigma lenses, I have lots of them including their Macro lenses, they are all good optically and no problem with build quality.