Auto/manual focus

I think the consensus view is that autofocus is not much use for close-up/macro. My experience is different, and I use autofocus almost all the time. It does however depend on the kit and the magnification. 

For my relatively low magnification botanical imaging I find autofocus fine with close-up lenses, not quite as good but very usable with the Olympus 60mm macro and not quite as good again but usable with my Sigma 105 macro on APS-C and full frame. This is for single image capture. The situation is different for post focus and focus bracketing, both of which use autofocus. The 60mm macro works fine with post focus and focus bracketing (neither post focus nor focus bracketing is available on my APS-C and full frame cameras).

For invertebrates I find autofocus with close-up lenses fine down to 10mm scene width or so. It works less well as the magnification increases beyond that but it can still be usable for quite small scenes. I have used autofocus (hand-held) with a scene around 3mm wide (as can be seen from 13:35 to 14:00 in this video at You Tube where I was using a 32 diopter Raynox MSN-505 on a 45-175 lens on a Panasonic G5, which at maximum zoom covers a scene width of around 3mm). That was exceptional though. I have only ever worked with scene sizes that small on an occasional experimental basis.

My experience of autofocus with macro lenses has not been positive for the scene widths I normally work with for invertebrates. I found that the focusing hunted so much that trying to use autofocus was unproductive.

And of course higher magnification macro lenses do not support autofocus anyway.