Well first of all I should say is hi to everyone and what a great Forums these are.

For the last 20 years of my life I have wanting to give photography a go and its been either time or money that has stopped me and I have both the money and time to finally get into it.
Any way what I have is a Nikon F80 with no lens and manual and am now starting to look a lenses can anyone Tell me what a lenses I should be looking at,
The type of photography I would like to play with is Macro and being a newbie I don’t want to go out and spend thousands on one lens.
I also need a general purpose lens.

A couple I have been looking at is
Nikon AF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6G
Nikon AF Nikkor 24-50mm F3.3D (Thinking general lens)
Tamron AF-D 80 - 210 mm F4.5-5.6

Anyway if you people could give me some ideas or point me to some good online learning materials it would be fantastic.

Thank you in advance.
Sean

Depending on your budget, look at the Nikon 28-105 f3.5-f4.5. It's more money than the 28-80 that you list but it's a sharp lens with a macro feature. Because of that, it's probably a good choice. It has a 62mm filter size which is pretty common in Nikon's line up too. Down side to this lens is that the hood for it is huge - but since it controls flare very well, you won't always need it. I've had this lens for about four years and been happy with it. I don't really shoot macro, but the feature has come in handy a few times.

The macro feature on this zoom or any other zoom isn't anywhere near as good as a true macro lens though. I know the 60mm Nikon is very sharp and will do 1:1, but costs about as much as the 28-105. It's also a pretty short focal length for macro. Most people I know who do this usually prefer a focal length in the 90-105 range. The Nikon 105 costs about twice that much but there are supposed to be other good (Tamron, etc) lenses out there too.