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The 995 fixed the flash problem, in part.

The good: the flash is now positioned above the lens. I used it to take the Argie ant picture above. you can see that the illumination angle works well. At the fast shutter speeds needed to reduce blurring by fast-moving ants (the one above was at 1/2000), the flash is essential.

The bad: with the new position, the camera body blocks the flash within 3-4 cm of the lens, so the pictures all come out shaded black at the bottom if you try to take full advantage of the up-close macro. The way to get around this is with the little macro attachment, which allows greater magnification from only slightly farther away.

The macro lens is the inner lens on the Crystal Vision .45x Wide Angle lens w/macro. Not too fancy- I just screw off the inner lens from the wide-angle part and attach it to the camera. Besides allowing me greater magnification, it also allows me to take advantage of the 995's 4x optical zoom. Without this macro lens, the camera's normal macro setting must be down at less than 2x zoom or it won't focus for extreme close-ups. The difference in magnification is remarkable, since not only is it a more powerful macro magnification with the lens, when I zoom in 4x even small insects get pretty big. Add in the fact that the macro lens gives maximum magnification just far enough away from the camera that the flash doesn't obscure the subject, and it is a great little investment.