Newbie Help With lenses

[SeanInAus]

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

[another view]

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.