I like to work close, and in a perfect world, I'd have the proper modern equipment to capture macro subjects quickly, easily, and, perhaps most important, automatically. Alas, I don't live in that world, so I have to make do with what I have, which is about as unautomatic a set-up as exists in the photographic universe. That could, I suppose, be cause for the gnashing of teeth, but I've chosen to see it as simply yet another challenge to meet. So when our one Amaryllis put forth four incredible blossoms, I grabbed my four-decades-and-counting old 55mm Nikkor micro, attached it to a modern dSLR that couldn't communicate with it electronically, set the camera to Manual, and proceeded to shoot the way I did in the pre-auto era. Not only do you have to set all the controls, like shutter speed and f/ stop, by hand, but you have to do something exceedingly retro, focus manually. This means that many, many shots are not quite right. But when you hit that sweet spot with a lens so sharp you can almost count individual grains of Amaryllis pollen, well, maybe I can live another year without a new, modern, and nearly four-figure-expensive Nikkor macro. Ancient still does the job.