steve harley
i knocked off a star because it doesn’t come with a hood, the manual focus feel is not quite excellent, and the focal length is longer than my ideal the lens is very well built, extremely sharp, and relatively easy to use; it works well as a short telephoto, focusing quickly but (like all AF macros) it can hunt; the range limiter switch helps, and is better than the range limiters on other macros i’ve used; how the manual focus operates is the most critical aspect for true macro shots, and this lens has a good focus-by-wire responsiveness, but it still feels a bit disconnected compared to true manual focus; the lens should come stock with a hood; because the hood is sold separately for a big upcharge, i ordered a 3rd party hood and it’s merely “good enough” 60mm yeilds about 16° horizontal field of view; for my preference that is a bit less useful for both macro and other uses than shorter lenses; i was pretty happy with the FOV of the Olympus 50/2.0 (4/3 lens with adapter), but it was heavier and not as facile; on Pentax (APS-C), i really liked the 35mm macro, which came to about 38° FOV — i like how wider macros bring more context into close shots; i also found them more useful as general purpose lenses (on most excursions i bring only one or two lenses); 60mm will somewhat better suit those looking mainly to photograph insects and isolated subjects