Help for beginner

I only started taking photos a year and a half ago, but I can tell you a few things. There is an enormous array of relatively inexpensive (300-500 dollar) digital point-and-shoots on the market, many of them with pretty good macro capabilities. My Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ3 was 300 bucks, was very easy to learn, and focuses up to 5 cm at the wide end of the zoom. In good light, I can take pictures like this or this with relative ease. If you intend to take highly detailed, extreme close-ups of bugs, like this, take shots of very very small bugs, or shoot indoors or in low light, you will probably want a more expensive SLR setup.

Are you interested in other types of photography as well, like action shots or telephoto shots? If you are, a digital point-and-shoot with decent macro and a big zoom lens, like the FZ3 or one of the similar models put out by Panasonic, Sony, Kodak, and others, would be an excellent choice. Relatively cheap, and you can go from shooting a spider on a flower to shooting a bird in the top of a tree in a matter of seconds, without futzing with lenses and flash units. If you are going to concentrate solely on macro, and you have some money to burn, you might want to get a decent SLR, a macro lens setup, and maybe a ring flash. (Overhead flash units, including the ones that come with most point-and-shoots, are not great for macro because up close they are blocked by the camera's shadow).

Check out dpreview.com for more info on cameras. I spent literally two weeks perusing reviews on this site before I picked mine.