One point worth considering, have you got a wide angled lens? I've been surprised how good my Sigma 10-20mm is at flower shots. Being wide angled, the depth of field is exceptional, you can really close up. Not macro, but that's not what I was after.
Here's an example:
This was hand held, 1/250sec @ F13.0 ISO 200. Taken at 20mm end of the lens.