[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

If you have a digital camera that is so cheap as not to have the half click for freezing your focus and/or exposure, you can ignor what I am about to say, and maybe should get a better camera. When I had a Canon A40, I had a devil of a time getting the camera to focus on the flower, as it always wanted to focus on the green back ground (other plants). The reason for this is that the algorithm for focus was based on best contrast, and since the typical point and shoot camera has 2 green pixels for every red or blue pixel, the green back ground always got the attention of the focus system.

My work around was to bring a white card with black writing, like a preprinted label up to the face of the flower, half click for focus, drop the label/recompose, and complete the shot. For criticle focus it sometimes took several shots to get it right, with review at high res to see the focus result. The other thing to do if you are close enough that the background subject does not have any influence on the focus algorithm, set the camera to use center focus if your camera gives you a choice, then pick the part of the flower you want to have in best focus, half click with this in the center of the screen, then recompose and finish the click. I do this regularly with my DSLR to pick several items of different depth into the flower to decide afterwards which gave me the best focus over all. Half clicks are very handy.