I’ve only just started to get into macrophotography, and didn’t want to spend too much while I’m just dipping my toes, but it didn’t take long to realize that a 1:1 magnification lens just wasn’t enough for what I wanted to capture. On paper, this Brightin Star 60mm F2.8 macro lens sounds great, offering double the magnification at a similar or significantly lower price point to other macro lenses with just 1:1 magnification. The concern of course is that a cheap lens will also have poor image quality, so I was very pleasantly impressed at just how sharp and clear the Brightin Star macro lens was in real world usage.The one I received was the updated version of this lens, distinguished by the metallic orange trim near the end of the lens as well as a thinner aperture ring and added depth-of-field scale imprinted on the lens barrel. The aperture now goes down to f/22, one stop smaller than the previous model. Macrophotographer Micael Widell has reviewed the older version of this lens and one issue he discovered was that the aperture markings were incorrectly marked, such that they indicated a wider aperture than what was actual (eg. f/8 was more realistically f/16). This appears to have been resolved in this updated model based on my comparison with another macro lens I have.This is a weighty lens, over 600 grams in weight. This can be an issue in the field when you’re trying to hold the camera steady with one hand while maneuvering a leaf just right to try to capture that critter that’s on the other side, especially for more compact cameras that have a smaller grip. My hands certainly tired much sooner than when using a lighter lens.One key advantage of a true macro lens over extension tubes is that the single lens can cover the full focusing range from the minimum focusing distance (and 2:1 magnification) all the way to infinity. So this lens can be used not only for close-up macro work, but it also works as a 60mm (equivalent to 90mm full frame) mild telephoto lens for portraits and landscape photography. I found that focusing was not too difficult for portraits, even though there is only a very short amount of focus throw available from 1 meter to infinity. Focusing is aided by very good contrast, so focus peaking operates quite well with sufficient light. I included a sample portrait image with this lens.Lighting is of course a critical issue with macrophotography, since the depth-of-field is so narrow at high magnification that you need to stop down quite a bit to get more than just a sliver in focus, but that of course significantly reduces the light from the image. This is where a good flash and diffuser is important with macrophotography, but it is here that one major issue did emerge with the Brightin Star lens. What I discovered was that with certain orientations of my flash diffuser the Brightin Star lens seemed to exhibit significant internal reflection, characterized by sort of a haziness of the image. I’m including a side-by-side example of the Brightin Star lens with another well regarded 65mm macro lens using identical lighting setups. This greatly reduces the quality of the image, and is the primary serious flaw I encountered with the lens. I was debating whether this factor was serious enough to deduct a star from my review, but in the end I decided that the other excellent image quality aspects at this budget friendly price overweighed this flaw, especially since it only occurs under certain lighting conditions.