Silverrails

As a Beginner of 3 years now, I am considerating buying a used Nikon 105mm Ais Lens for my Nikon D3300, will a manual focus lens work properly for Macro Photography?

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

How was it I knew you had a Nikon? 105mm. It should work fine manually. And you should know even many older Nikkor AF do not AF with the D3xxx cameras, one usually needs a D5xxx or higher for that. The D7xxx, Dxxx, Dxx, & Dx series have two focus drive systems. In lens and via body for older lenses. Anyway, you should shoot all manually for serious close-up or macro photography anyway. I manually focus critical focused shots even when I have a AF AE lens on the camera.

Quixdraw Loc: x

newtoyou Loc: Eastport

I believe most shoot macro in manual.
Fine focus is achieved by the len's proximity to the subject.
One 'sways in and out' to achieve focus.
Bill

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

To get the sharpest images a manual focus lens work best for Macro Photography. I also use a monopod or tripod depending upon the macro image.

Quixdraw Loc: x

I'm all in on Sharp, and I won't claim Macro, but I use mostly AF and never a tripod. Different strokes!

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I shoot with both a fully manual focus macro lens and with a more modern AF lens (many times via LiveView and some manual focus tweaking). Rightly or wrongly, I'm going to consider myself qualified to say: you'll be more satisfied with an AF lens for the widest variety of macro.

If you can work from a tripod indoors on completely static shots (plants / flowers, food, stamps / coins, similar), working with manual focus requires no special skill other than using the 10x zoom of the LiveView screen.

But, for moving subjects like any form of insect and / or outdoors, an AF-enabled lens is much easier to capture usable results. An IS / VR lens helps even more, making the tripod less necessary. Hence, the AF macro provides the macro tools to enable the widest variety of macro / close-up photography.

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

A manual focus lens will capture images with that body but there will be no metering available. I used to use a D70s which didn't meter with the older gear either. That said, my use of supplemental lighting negates the need for metering. I shoot entirely in manual, both the camera mode, focusing and metering. The ring light I use has an auto mode (which I don't use) and has the ability to adjust the intensity of the flash. Most times I have it set to about 1/2. If need be, I can adjust it or the aperture if the LCD shows the exposure as too light/dark. IThe flash negates all motion, be it my own or my subjects and the flash allows me to stop down the lens for additional DOF. I have 9 different true macro lenses from 55 to 180mm in focal length. Some are AF, others are MF. My go-to lens is an older 105mm F2.8 MF lens from the mid 80's...The closer you get to life-size images, the less effective AF & VR systems on a camera become..

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

Manual focus is commonly used for this kind of photography. Others do legitimately get along fine with automatic focus, but I am not one of them since for me the lens will often 'hunt' for focus when working close.

I am not familiar with Nikon. Having automatic aperture is very convenient, so you can focus and compose wide open and then the picture is taken at whatever aperture you'd set. But I don't know if that will be the case here. If manual aperture, having to manually stop down the aperture and keep focus and composure will at times be difficult. Supplemental lighting helps.