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Since everyone seems to be talking about cameras as well as lenses I thought I'd throw in something that camera manufacturers have suddenly woken up to and that is dust. With macro photos and using small apertures dust becomes a major issue as it shows up much more than in 'normal' shooting.
The latest offering from canon, the 400d is supposed to have various systems in to get rid of dust. However comparing it to a 20d it can actually be worse when doing macro shots. With the 20d (and similar cameras) you tend to end up with a few large lumps of dirt which have to be periodically cleaned off the sensor - I use a sensor swab. However with the 400d I have not found these large lumps but instead there is an covering of small specs all over the image which are more difficult to get rid of when editing the image. Because these bits of dust are small they don't show up at all during 'normal' distance shooting so canon has succeeded in getting rid of the problem of dust for people who don't do the exciting close-up shots but may have made it worse for us!!