FWIW, I've been taking a lot of flower pictures with a Canon Digital Rebel and Sigma 105mm f2.8 EX macro lens. I usually don't use a tripod, though that depends on lighting and personal preference. Most of my SW plant pictures at www.polyploid.net were taken with the Digital Rebel and Sigma 105mm. For greater magnifications I sometimes use extension tubes, which are hollow tubes mounted between the lens and the camera body that decrease the minimum focus distance of the lens, apart from that the only thing I use often on plant pictures is a flash on a hotshoe cord.

Close-up filters are lenses that screw onto the end of another lens, basically just a magnifying glass that screws on. They will give you greater magnification, but usually with poor image quality.

I don't take pictures of birds, so can't help on that one. What I do know is that any lens longer than 300mm is going to be either very expensive, or give crappy pictures.

Patrick Alexander

I have a little Canon Powershot 75 that has reasonably good macro settings without getting the optional macro lens (which costs as much as the camera!!)...

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I also recently bought a spotting scope for shooting birds. It's a quite inexpensive Chinese knockoff of the Bushnell scopes, and with a decent tripod, I can literally just point my digital into the view finder for pretty good quality shots...

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Anyway, try shooting your macro shots on a high speed setting and experiment with lighting/flash settings too. The best digital shots, in my experience, are the one excellent shot you get after taking 10 pictures.