Learn about lenses

OK, so I'm doing some research about lenses, now that I have had a chance to mess around with the lenses I got when I purchased my camera, and am getting a feel for what the abilities and limits are for them.

I find I like to do a fair amount of macro photography, and am finding that, with this camera at least (probably all), the standard 50mm lens isn't lending itself to macro all that well... neither is my telephoto zoom lens (but they can).

First lets discuss briefly the different types: prime and zoom. Prime lenses cannot change their focal length, thus a 50mm prime is always at 50mm, where a zoom lens allows you to adjust the focal length, like my 55-200mm telephoto lens.

Now lets learn about the different types of lens categories, based on focal length :
Wide: <50mm
Standard: ~50mm
Telephoto: >100mm
Then you have ultra-wide and super-telephoto, clearly the extrema. These all come in prime and zoom, and the zooms come in any category with a little zoom to a lot of zoom.
Macro lenses are designed to take photos of things up close. These are typically around the standard length, but can be longer (~100mm)

So as I have stated earlier, I have a standard 50mm prime lens, which I picked out specifically because: A) Standard is close to what we naturally see, for natural looking pictures
B) It is fast: the aperture is as low as f/1.8 which means it can open the aperture really big and let in a lot of light at once, allowing for better photography in low light conditions.
C) It was affordable. Most lenses start at like $250, and those are the CHEAP ones!
I also have a telephoto lens: 55mm-200mm f/4.5-5.6. This gets me some zoom, but I would like some more, 300mm or maybe even 400mm... I would have to take a look at them on the camera to know better. That is a far future investment though, as I am fairly happy with what I have.

However, having said that, I do want the ability to take better macro shots, and... as I just stated, lenses are very, VERY expensive. On that note, from multiple examples, I have heard that it is better to spend your money on good glass than it is to upgrade to a new body (assuming you already have an SLR that is). So to get around having to buy another expensive lens, I will buy an adapter, or a lens cover, that will allow me to use my current lenses as macro lenses, for more like $40. I will have to do that sooner rather than later (read: this weekend).

I would also like a wider lens, but again, that will have to wait for some time in the future when I crawl out of the deep dark hole of debt I have put myself in (you didn't think I could afford all that outright, did you?)

Hope you learned something, even if you didn't, this exercise was for me, and I learned something.