Excellent post by Lance B just above; worth reading twice. Take care with Arthur's reply: he is mixing up standard photographic understandings with a few Nikon-only specials and the result is very confusing!

As Lance says, while a true macro lens is defined as a lens capable of reproducing the subject at 1:1 (Nikon call this same thing "micro"), in practice, most people are comfortable extending the "macro" designation to any lens which is specifically designed for close-up work even if it doesn't quite manage the 1:1 ratio. Arthur mentions designated macro lenses from Ziess and Voightlander that aren't technically macro capable because, like the Canon 50mm macro, they don't do 1:1 without an extra converter. The point is, however, that these not-quite-macro lenses function just like "real" macro lenses insofar as they have very shord MFDs, slow, precise, long-throw manual focus mechanisms, and flat planes of focus. (Most lenses offer a curved "plane" instead, which is vastly easier to design and manufacture and doesn't matter much for a portrait or even a landscape, but is no good for (e.g.) copying a map or a document. Achieving this in a (optically simple) prime lens is one thing; achieving it in a (vastly more complicated) zoom lens might be something else entirely! Old-time enlarger lenses were the same in this regard: very flat plane of focus. You can probably make or buy adapters to redeploy then as high quality manual focus camera lenses for macro - I bet at least three members here have done just that!)

I think everyone in this thread is saying "get the 17-70 anyway, 'coz it's a good general-purpose lens", and that's a sensible response.

By the way, as others have mentioned, macro lenses make great general-purpose lenses, though of fixed focal length, of course. Here are some examples of my two:

Tokina 35mm macro: http://tannin.net.au/browse.php?firs...rt_by=cam_code

Canon 60mm macro: http://tannin.net.au/browse.php?firs...ort_by=shutter