The middle image, from which the comparison crops were taken, was shot from a distance of about one foot.

There is a question of the effect of mirror slap with the Nikon D70. At shutter speeds ranging from 1/30 to 1 second (the usually quoted range - it might be more or less), speculation is that vibrations from the mirror slap will adversely affect image quality. I ran three tests. #1 used the Nikkor-Micro 105mm 1:1 lens for a macro photo. This was of interest to me personally since flower macros with this lens are "my thing." The next two tests used a Tamron 70-300 Tele-Macro. One test was done at 180mm and the other at 300mm. I chose these two focal lengths since tele-zooms are alleged to be soft at the far end. I tested a telezoom because long range shots of wild life and flower macros using the 1:2 capability of this lens in the 180-300 range are my other "favorite thing."

I shot about 10 shots in each of three tests at shutter speeds known to be free of mirror slap problems (2 shots) and known to be "suspect speeds (8 shots). This gallery shows the two shutter speed extremes - a vibration free speed and a "suspect" speed. All shots used Gitzo tripod & remote shutter release.

Summary - the 105mm 1:1, shooting closeup at lifesize, exhibits no problems. The long lens is definitely "less sharp" for shots in the slower shutter speed range. 300 appears to be worse than 180 (as you might expect).

If you're looking at this as part of my PAD gallery, you can see the other two test's results in my gallery named Experiments.