Lighting

In addition to a good camera support, the next thing (or maybe simultaneous-thing) that will help get sharp macro-photographs is supplemental – lighting. (”supplemental” is a latin-word which is derived from the 2 base-phrases, the first being “Suppli” which means “soft” and “Mental” which means “mentally-imbalanced”. Although I was not a latin-major in school, I would assume from this that it means “soft-imbalanced-lighting”…but I could be wrong…).

For Macro-photography, usually the on-camera flash doesn’t work too well (not always, but pretty-much).
Primarily because of it’s brightness at close-distances, and it’s close-proximity to the lens centerline, it either blows-out the little thing you’re trying so hard to get a photo of or it doesn’t help because the lens casts a shadow right where you want the light to be (still waiting for that bendy -light prism -flash….).
The next move would be to have an accessory-flash that mounts to the hot-shoe. Remembering all the caveats of the on-camera-flash, the best flash for this purpose is the Macro-flash.
Traditionally this has been in the form of a ring-light that mounts the power-unit to the hot-shoe, and the actual flash (ring-light) in front of your lens. Many ring-lights have a means for exposing one or both halves of the light to change the shape and brightness of the light.
This gives you the ability to have more of a side-lighting to accentuate textures, or drop down the background. It’s gives you a picture with lighting that is less-flat than a full ring-light. But if you need flat-lighting in your picture, a full ring-light is the cat’s meow.
All of the major camera manufacturers make ring-lights, Nikon’s SB-29 is a good example, and many after market manufacturers like SIGMA and PHOENIX make them.
I have always been envious of the Olympus twin-flash setup and the Canon Twin-light setup. It looked to be a good way to have versatile macro-lighting.
Well the powers-that-be in Nikon-land have answered my prayers! They’ve introduced an awesome new macro flash system (actually 2 systems, one for the Pro cameras, like the D2x etc, and one for the Pro-sumer cameras like the D200 and D70 that have built-in pop-up flash), it looks very similar to the Olympus / Canon systems but is expandable and (yes, yes, yes!!) is part of the AWESOME i-TTL system.
The Pro-sumer series is called the: R1 close-up wireless system, and the primary difference between it, and the R1C1 Wireless Close-Up Speedlight System is the R1 doesn’t include the SU-800 controller head. It’s controlled by the pop-up flash on your compatible Nikon Camera (D70, D50s, D-50 D-200) in Commander mode.
The SU-800 controller gives you the control versatility of the SB-800, plus, if you’ve been using an SB-800 flash in the hot-shoe, it frees the flash up to be used elsewhere, as a remotely triggered slave.
My R1 system is coming today via UPS (I got it here) and I’m anxiously awaiting it’s arrival as I have some ophthalmic micro-devices that I’m shooting and want to try the system out. Should be cool.
Speaking of i-TTL and the SB-800s, in the wireless remote-commander mode, they give you great capabilities for macro-lighting. You might have to power then down a trifle, but between the i-TTL system, and the great adjustability of the cameras and flashes, they make a great wireless flash system (as do the SB-600s).
A good flash system can give you the ultimate in sharpness for your macro-photography by allowing you to have a fast shutter speed, a longer depth-of-field, and the ability to freeze the subject for the duration of the flash.

So, having said all of that, I hope you’ll give Macro-photography a chance and try it at any (or all) levels, it’s way cool and you can do it in your jammies!
Enjoy!

HTB