[B Grace]

This is pretty helpful.

Macro photography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The important factors for me are minimum focusing distance and working distance. Yes, there are zooms that offer Macro ranges which are helpful but not really capable of microphotography. Modern dedicated macro primes, at least since the early 1970s, offer magnification ratios up to 1:1 which is cool. A person who is serious about microphotography will be shopping for a bellows kit for excellent quality high-mag close-ups. And the dedicated bellows lenses the manufacturers have made over the years are a good investment when purchasing a bellows kit.

[yeatzee]

To me, a lens considered "macro" has to focus at a minimum of 1:2. Anything else is just a close focusing lens.

[Marc Sabatella]

Plenty of examples, yes. What I'm looking for is contemporary photographer outcry such as letters to editors and/or photo magazine articles that expose this use of "Macro" label by manufacturers as false advertising.

When you say you're "looking for" this, does that you are encouraging this, or just wondering if it happens? I don't see enough letters to the editor to know how common it is, but I've read enough forum postings to know that yes, indeed, there is quite a lot of complaining about this.

The context was pre-AF era manual focus lenses. Of course there are more modern examples.

Ah. I wasn't aware you were making this distinction.

Computer-aided design lenses of the pre-AF-era marketed with Macro label are well enough corrected for barrel distortion and CA, especially CA, to actually enable them to be used with tubes or bellows to achieve 1:1 resolution without the image breaking apart entirely.

Now that does make sense. And as I said, some macro lenses were (and still are) sold with matched adapters designed to get you to 1:1.

But in any case, relevant to the OP: as it stands, without additional hardware, it's pretty obvious his lens is *not* functioning as a macro lens. And with additional hardware, many lenses *not* labeled as macro will in fact function well enough.

[wedge]

So, the general consensus is that this particular lens being labeled as it is was most likely a "marketing choice" rather than an accurate description of its capabilities. Unless, of course, it was originally sold with some other accessory (an additional threaded lens or extension tube) that allowed it to function as a "true" macro lens. Obviously, that accessory is no longer with it, so it's basically just a regular ol' 135 mm lens.

[rhodopsin]

"Macro" label seems about as accurate a description as "crop-factor"