When I went to camera shops, I took with me a small ribbon pin from a Charity, the idea being that I'd test cameras because I wanted something that would work well on things the size of small butterflies. It's surprising how unhelpful most shops were; they immediately pushed me towards expensive DSLRs. Whilst I'll eventually take the plunge, I really wanted something smaller for now.
I played with a lot of cameras that had big digital zooms, 10x, 15x even 18x, but they all seemed to have difficulty with the autofocus when using the zoom and macro. Without exception their manuals said they could do it from about 100 or 120 cm away, but in fact none of them actually worked very well. It was possible to eventually get them to focus, but by the time they managed it any self-respecting butterfly would have flown off, had its tea and gone to bed.
I eventually bought a Ricoh Caplio R5, with 7MP and 7x digital zoom. The macro seems to work well and the autofocus works quicker than I'm used to. It's by no means the camera of my dreams, but I'm happy with the pics it's giving me....
Here are a few samples.......
