thanks for contributing guys. It is indeed a cactus leaf. I perhaps should have tweaked the colour on the second to the same as #1 to even them up but the sharpness would not change. It could be argued that my technique was better in the first or I was just lucky.
Actually the first is the 35-70 F2.8 set on macro
mode(cropped in though!) and the second is the 55 micro. It surprised me too but i suspect that the difficulty of getting the right focus etc with the 55 as it is all manual on the D70 has something to do with it, because it is a very sharp lens. I will still persevere with it to find a shooting work flow that produces more consistent results. However no question as to the sharpness of the 35-70. This is the reason why I chose it to do the jewelry pamphlet job a few months ago.
cheers
marco