Strawberry

We bought some fabulous strawberries yesterday. They LOOK great and they TASTE fantastic. I could not resist the idea of doing a still life macro study, using one of them as a subject.

I DO do still life close ups quite a bit, very often using my handy little Canon G12 but I also have this very nice Sigma f2.8-5.6 17-70mm macro zoom which when used in conjunction with a +4 dioptre close up lens gets me very close to 1:1 at the top of the zoom range. At the end of the day, however, there are severe limitations. At max zoom it is quite slow whch limits my options on occasion. With having to add the close focus lens I DO lose some sharpness but the WORST issue is that I have to get so close to the subject which will scare away anything that's alive, rob me of critical dof and block off much of the available light.

So I am looking at getting a longish macro prime. I was considering a Nikkor 105mm macro but can't justify the cost. On the other hand, Photozone and Thom Hogan rave about the Tamron AF 90mm f2.8 Di Macro. No stabilisation and no AFS but auto focus doesn't work all that well for macro anyway. They say it's every bit as sharp as the Nikkor but is less than half the price. Has anybody out there used that lens?