Few questions for you to answer that will help with the recommendations. What's your price range? Do you just want a camera that you can point and shoot or would you like to have more creative control over the settings/results? When you say 'real nice close shots' do you mean like the single acro polyp filling the frame... or close enough that a few zoos will fill the frame? Another thing to consider is do you want to make big prints, just post on the web, or something in between?