Close-up For Tamron

In my increasing world of photography, I need lenses to do specific jobs, a 28-200mm lens for general use, a wide-angle zoom for interiors, a 50mm standard lens for backup and a macro lens for close-up photography.
I need them to be cheap as only the 28-200mm lens is in general use and it would not be economically viable to spend a lot of money on the others.
At £300 here in England the Tamron 90mm lens was less than half the price of it's Nikon rival. I chose this lens as it was given great praise by Practical Photography magazine who did not give a very good review of the Nikon.

The lens performs brilliantly, sharp optics, great autofocus and a fast f2.8 aperture for low light. The only quibbles I have with it is that it has a plasticky feel to it which is a bit off-putting.
The best feature it has is a push-pull focusing ring where you push it forwards to select autofocus and back to select manual focus. This makes switching focus modes simpler and quicker than by doing it on the camera body. The ring does not rotate during autofocus so you can grip the whole lens and not have to hold the camera end of the lens with two fingers.
The lens is also supplied with a lens hood which is a nice touch.
Finally, the lens has Nikon D-type focus capabilities, a distance reading ability used for the flash and light 3-D Matrix meters for even more accurate exposures.

In summary, there are many budget lenses which are optically compromised compared to the more expensive camera make rivals. The amazing thing about this lens is that in optical terms it can fend off virtually all other macro lenses and the ones that it cannot are well over twice the price.