A film-era lens from around 1990; it shares the same fairly sophisticated optical formula as the earlier and slightly better-known manual focus version (10 elements in 9 groups) to achieve true 1:1 macro.
Actually seems pretty decently built, there's plenty of chunky metal under the plastic shell and the auto focus is quieter and snappier than I expected ( mind you this is a 'D' lens so we're using the focus motor and sensor of the D300 here). I used to have the more modern EX DG version which I thought was excellent on our old D70 Nikon; I expect with the lack of digital-type coatings on the elements that this lens will be a bit less contrasty and more prone to flare. But we'll see shall we? :-).

Yep that looks like contrast-robbing veiling flare and furthermore I reckon the D300's matrix metering is not exposing it all that well ( overexposure even with a little negative compensation, probably much better with old-school centre weighted metering). Still not all a bad characteristic as this is strong angled hazy light and a bright background and sometimes you want this.
You'll notice there's still plenty of sharpness on the flower and at f11 the background could be a lot worse; none of the nasty 'doughnut' highlights you get with some more modern lenses (I'm looking at you Mr 60mm micro nikkor :-| ).
I don't think I'd use this lens to photograph jewellery on light backgrounds in a light tent though.
Let's try it with better lighting...

Now we're cooking; f16 this time to really nail the depth of focus required by the flower.
Beautiful really, especially as diffraction at this narrow aperture can knock back lens performance hard.
So let's open it up a bit, an obscure internet review has it that this lens in its manual-focus form is actually sharpest at f5.6.

Excellent; soft light too.
A couple of background highlight points (between the roses) have a little of that hexagonal character from the aperture blades; not too harsh in this instance but could be an issue with stronger contrast.
Let's open it up a bit more and get out in the sun...

The focus point was Felix's nose and we're at f3.5.
It took 4 or 5 frames to nail the relatively shallow depth of focus on this active subject but once again there's plenty of detail in the fur and a melting background; this is showing excellent characteristics for a portrait lens especially for crop-sensor DSLR's. I think for general photography I'll find myself 'punching the blacks' and pushing up the vibrance (sophisticated saturation) slider in Photoshop/Lightroom a bit but I tend to do that anyway.

And a verdict?

Well I'm using it and liking it and getting used to it's little ways, I'm starting to see a lot of that nice '3D' character that a good lens can give you. It's as nice in it's own way as my Tokina 90mm ATX macro; maybe that's a slight overstatement but hell I paid $NZ65 including postage for this wee gem...if you see one for sale in good nick and it's compatible with your Nikon, Sony (Minolta mount) or Pentax then you really should try it.

Nice filtered light, even at f11 the Tokina 90mm macro is showing it's smooth out-of-focus gradation ('bokeh').
Mind you softer light is your friend for this type of rendering.
I feel this lovely lens tends to be a little 'cool' in tone, but nothing that a slight tweek in photoshop can't remedy.

Every photographer is familiar with the common sets of screw-on close focus filters of various magnifications that can enable macro or near-macro on standard or mild telephoto lenses. They vary in quality but all tend to introduce problems such as CA (chromatic aberration), field curvature, corner softness and general image degradation and distortion.

There are better alternatives to them that don't involve the inconvenience of extension tubes, bellows or teleconverters which interfere with the metering function of your lens or severely curtail it's maximum aperture.

Achromatic close-up lenses are more sophisticated doublet optical designs that retain the quality of the original lens to a greater degree. Of course you lose infinity focus but you get to experience the undoubted goodness of a 200mm macro lens (for example) as in the shot above. They come in various magnifications and filter sizes; step-up and/or down rings can aid fitting a slightly wrong sized one to your intended lens.
Only $40 for the Nikon 6T attached to my lovely Tamron 70-300 vc (zoomed to 200mm at f8).

I got lucky on the Nikon 6T since it's discontinued but there are several alternate brands that are not the more expensive Canon and Nikon ones; in particular the Sigma 58mm that was made for their old 70-300mm APO lens  (less magnification than the 62mm 6T but it cost me all of  $15, which is typical) and a wide range of Marumi options.

 A good summary of most of the available types is found here. 

I like them.

Fast flying, common and attractive.
It's Wikipedia page is Here.

Tiny cactus from a South American genus of around 70 species.
Exquisite.

My 'new' old Sigma 50mm macro arrived so I zipped out and snapped a few frames at f8.
Partial desaturation and a sharpen that had little visible effect; this is a sharp lens as you might expect from a macro prime. Very happy.