a little flower symbol on the mode knob or menu or whatever - that's for close-in focus...

(On edit: it might also help the focus to use a little tripod, and the timer (delay) to trip the shutter instead of your finger. Any little vibration could be giving you blurring on fine details.)

Thanks! Yes, it has a little flower (it's a Nikon Coolpix camera) I hit it and it was turned off. It's now on, so maybe I will try taking some pics today and see what happens. Thanks for the advice!

Lots of talented folks down there, who may or may not visit the Lounge...

Good luck!

In the flower mode, the focal point is not dead center. You have to do the half-press focus thing a few times before you find the sweet spot for what you're trying to zoom in on. I've frequently ended up with shots that gave me the green "I'm in focus" light only to find out on the computer that what it focused on was closer or farther away than the thing in question (usually insects or spiders). It's frustrating, but it does take practice. Really good lighting minimizes the problem.

One thing that might help is a mini tri-pod and using the zoom with the flower setting. The closer you physically get to the object, the more likely it is to focus wrong. Also, there's a little vertical bar in the zoom meter (top of the screen). That's the point where you are moving from optical zoom to digital zoom. There's rarely if ever a reason to use the digital zoom portion, but that's particularly true for close-up shots.

This maximizes depth of field, which can get quite narrow the closer you try to focus.

Zooming the lens really won't help much either. It will increase your working distance, but it won't increase the reproduction ratio, which is the deciding factor for close up performance.

The reason why your focusing system works better with more light is because focus depends on contrast. The less light you have often translates to less contrast. Digital zoom should not be used either because that will actually reduce your reproduction ratio.

I think most Coolpix cameras have the option of manual focusing. If you set the camera to manual focus and then adjust the focus to minimum distance, you will get the best close up performance your camera is capable of providing. You can then focus the camera by changing the camera to subject distance until the subject comes into focus. I think the green focus light should still work, but I've never owned a Coolpix, so I don't know for sure. It does on Nikon's DSLRs.

That thing takes AMAZING pictures!!! It makes a pretty good telescope too. It's funny. The only digital cameras I'll consider are Nikon and the only video cameras I'll consider are Sony. I'm not sure how I got to that point, but it's similar to my HP only rule for printers (in particular) and laptops and strictly Seagate for external USB drives. I used to be all Motorola for phones, but Samsung makes some damn good ones too - and I HAVE to have a flip phone or I'd kill the damn thing within a week. It's for its own protection, really. Then again, I drink Moxie.

In fact, my macro lens is manual focus only and I can take incredibly detailed pictures of bees by just moving the camera back and forth until focus is achieved. This is how most serious photographers do it. Autofocus is pretty much worthless in situations like that. How big the lens is or how much it zooms really has nothing to do with macro. My macro lens is only 55mm. The only thing that matters is how close the lens will focus relative to its focal length. Most lenses aren't designed to focus all that close. Usually regular lenses are focus limited to a certain distance. If they didn't limit the focusing distance, aberrations would make the resultant pictures very poor. Cheap macro lenses simply focus closer anyway and take relatively poor macro shots. True macro lenses will have floating elements that allow the lens to focus closer without excessive aberrations. To give you an idea how close you can get with a real macro lens, here's a couple of examples:

If you want to know what's in a dog's nostrils, those are the shots to look at.

be sure to get as close as you can to see the object in the viewfinder/LCD screen and hold the shutter button down halfway and let the camera focus on the object. If it won't focus, you are too close so back it up a little bit at a time until you can get a good focus.

Once you get a clear picture you can always upload it to your computer and crop out any extra stuff you don't want in the pic.

Oh, and lots of light...even with my little point and shoot, i try not to rely on the flash alone. A big open window with natural light is awesome if you can swing it. But your camera can adjust for indoor and fluorescent lighting too so just have lots of it.

like on old jewelry,hold your loupe in front of lens on camera.Works with the tiniest marks.

If it's relatively flat and you are trying to get hallmarks, this works well.

It has to do with minimum focusing distance and reproduction ratios. As someone else suggested you can try the macro mode if your camera has one, but I'm not sure you're going to get what you want. You can give it a try. Also if your camera has a manual focusing option, set the camera to manual focus and run the lens down to it's minimum focusing distance. Move the camera or the item back and forth until the item comes into focus. If you have a tripod, this will help. This method will give you the maximum reproduction ratio that your camera is capable of providing.

I don't think you're going to find a photo store that will do this for you. You can always ask. Some of the higher end photo shops will rent you the right equipment to do it, which would include a DSLR and a macro lens. If you don't have the right camera equipment, one of the easiest ways to do this is just to scan the items on a flat bed scanner. For items that are relatively flat, this works extraordinarily well.

here have suggested using the macro setting, but I personally have never been able to get good photos using it.

Here is a photo I took of a bumblebee on my bee balm this past summer...taken from a distance of about three feet using the zoom, on a Canon Power Shot S2 IS. Nothing fancy.

Not sure how much tinier you need to get, but I think it's sort of decent...