On the topic of bee photography, perhaps I should mention that the photo of
the swarm in a window which was used on the cover of Bee Culture a few
months ago was done with an Olympus D-460 Zoom 1.3 megapixel camera.  I
should perhaps also mention that although the above camera is useful for
general purposes and simple and intuitive to use, I find it is not useful
for photographing bugs at close range.  Although it has a macro feature, I
found that a bee in reasonable focus would fill only a small portion of a
frame.

I bought the Zoom camera after having a similar model without zoom and
having noticed that I was always cropping away and discarding a large
portion of the surface of most photos due to not having been able to get
close enough to the subject.  With the zoom, I can adjust the size of the
subject in the viewfinder and make best use of the pixels I have.

Although many emphasize the number of pixels and think it is the most
important criterion in a purchase, I think the  quality of those pixels and
the optics of the camera are more important, as is ease of use.  All digital
cameras are not equal and some cameras give more realistic colour and tone
depth than others.   I find my previous camera had noticeably superior
contrast and tone depth compared to the current one.  There are web sites (I
am away from home for a few days and do not have them handy) that show JPEGS
of identical shots made with different cameras and the difference can be
surprising.

There are also sites that feature owner comments on various cameras and
which compare features.  Some even give suppliers and compare prices.
Usually the reviews are quite in-depth  and very candid. Since the reporters
are people like you and me who want to say something about the camera they
bought, they typically represent a number of different types of users and
comments range from ecstatic to disappointed. Many reports are surprisingly
detailed and insightful.

Although the quality of the photos taken with most consumer level digital
cameras are impressive when examined by themselves, in my experience and my
opinion, they do not -- when compared side-by-side  -- hold a candle to good
shots taken on good film.

allen
http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/Diary/