I cant recommend the 50mm enough! Im by no means experienced but its the best £100 ive ever spent!
as for the macro, i use my 50mm 1.8 with some tubes and im pretty happy with it, the only problem is how close you need to get, something like a 100m macro would put about 300mm between you and your subject, im gonna upgrade soon to a decent macro but the 50mm and tubes do ok for now.
This was taken with the tubes:
