A Mafia Godfather finds out that his bookkeeper, Guido, has cheated  him out of $10,000,000.00.His bookkeeper is deaf.  That was the reason he got the job in the first place. It was assumed that Guido would hear nothing and would therefore never have to testify in court.

When the Godfather goes to confront Guido about the missing $10 million, he takes along his lawyer, who knows sign language.

The Godfather tells the lawyer, "Ask him where the money is."

 The lawyer, using sign language, asks Guido, “Where's the money?”

Guido signs back, "I don't know what you are talking about."
 
The lawyer tells the Godfather, "He says he doesn't know what you are  talking about."

The Godfather pulls out a pistol, puts it to Guido's head and says, "Ask him again or I'll kill him!"


The lawyer signs to Guido, "He'll kill you if you don't tell him."


Guido trembles and signs back, "OK! You win! The money is in a brown briefcase, buried behind the shed at my cousin Bruno's house."


The Godfather asks the lawyer, "What did he say?"

The lawyer replies, "He says you don't have the balls to pull the trigger."

  
Don't you just love lawyers?

I started with a canon bridge camera a number of years ago, and ultimately bought a Sony A6000 when I went to interchangeable lenses. I did some reading online, did a couple of Lynda.com photography courses, and of course practiced. I’ve had some good photos, but also many that left something to be desired. I recently retired, and decided to get serious about this photography thing. I stumbled across a course out of Great Britain called A Year With My Camera (AYWMC) by Emma Davies. It’s free, all online, though you can purchase an app and/or a book, if you want. There is a new lesson each week. I am 5 weeks into the program, and I have already learned so much. I wanted to share this with you because I think even more experienced photographers could learn something. It is answering many of the questions I’ve had. If you want to learn more, please give it a go.

Actually, the reason you buy a macro lens is so that you have a magnification of at least 1:1 at the minimum focusing distance AND if you decide to use extension tubes, the lens is already optimized for best quality at the minimum focus distance and closer.

The working distance on my Tamron 180mm is 18.5" and the Sigma is 15" - at their MFDs, the image magnification is 1:1.

There is no school of thought that if you use a lens at it's minimum focus distance AND your subject is fairly large, like a Hibiscus flower, there will be some cropping unless you move back. That's not an opinion.

At 1:1, it doesn't matter if you are at 6" from the subject with a 60mm lens or 18.5" from the subject with a 200mm lens - the amount of crop will be exactly the same because the magnification and the field of view will be exactly the same. But at 6" with a shorter lens you will encounter some challenges for lighting and lens /camera/human shadow.

The primary (but not the only) reason to get a longer macro lens is to have that 18" or more working distance and still have 1:1 magnification.

This is not a school of thought, it comes from applied practice.