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I used to use a ring light...a flash designed for macro photography that as the name suggests, is a ring that screws on to the filter ring of the lens, but it's a pain to deal with and I have too many filter ring sized lenses to keep up with it so I have long since abandoned it. I sold the contraption onebay last year finally so I wouldn't be tempted lol. Yes Natural light is always best. If I can move the subject into my studio, I sometimes shoot in there with studio lighting - softboxes -umbrellas - reflectors etc. It is important to use off camera flash unless you use a ring light to light a macro shot with flash. If your camera does not support this by way of either a hotshoe or a pc terminal then you simply cannot do macro photos with the little builtin flash and have them come out right. when you are focusing from only an inch or two or three away, the on camera flash is not going to be angled at your subject and will over shoot most of it. What it does hit will likely become washed out and what it doesn't will be heavily shadowed. If you have an off camera flash and a pc chord, you can angle it where you need to or even hold it up and over and create something similar to natural overhead sunlight. Outside, I use a fold out reflector sometimes to direct sunlight in for fill...sometimes I get lucky and the sun has angled it's self just right...other equipment you need- either a lens with a macro setting, or if you use a point and shoot camera, they sometimes have a macro setting somewhere builtin to the camera settings...or you can use close up filters that attach to the front of the lens. They usually come in sets of different magnification so not only can you get close up but you can also magnify beyond the powers of your lens' normal range and you can even stack them and make for more magnification. Another useful tool when all else fails is to shoot as close as you can and then do some heavy cropping but you sacrifice quality for closeness when you do that in most cases.
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