Finally......... after looking and waiting for 3 years there is a dslr, the 350, that is a serious candidate to enable me to make the switch from P&S. I take ~20,000 pics per year of spiders and insects, all hand held because the subjects move around and act quickly. I also find that a flip out screen is essential for ~30% of my shots - the alternative is not making the shot, getting my clothes dirty or damaging my neck or back! I actually prefer to use the viewfinder because I locate quicker & get steadier/faster focus but it's just not possible much of the time. btw, magnification and focus distances are ok with P&S provided you have a 10x or greater zoom lens - you just use a selection of the excellent, small, & inexpensive add on macro lenses attached using a bayonet fitting adaptor - in fact a bit like changing the lens on an slr.

So, on to the issues and questions that a novice to dslr has. It may appear I am focusing on the negative - so please don't take these items the wrong way - I believe the sony alpha lineup is breaking new ground in its' facilitation of macro photography.

1) Flip out Screen
The way that sony has implemented the flip out is not ideal for my use - but my conclusion is that it probably won't be changed to a full flip screen because of the row of buttons on the left side of the camera. I may miss some shots but I can live with this feature.
The more important issue is how to get good focus in live view (as with my P&S I will use fixed manual focus and move the camera to get focus). With P&Ss this is usually facilitated by pushing a button to get ~2x magnification in the center portion of the lcd screen - but this is done purely for focus after the shot has been framed. With the A350 there is the 2x capability which does aid macro focus greatly - but, as pointed out in Carl's excellent review, the frame changes to correspond to what you see. The option of pushing the switch back to 1x, followed by pushing the "take picture" button is not going to work because, hand held, focus will be long gone by then. Unless there is some work around this is probably the main defect of the A350 for my type of macro work and any suggestions would be much appreciated.

2) Dof
Increasing dof is a major reason for upgrading from P&S. I've looked, but haven't found any hard (or even not so hard) data on this for any dslr (there is good data for the P&S I use). My impression when I used the A350+50mm Macro at f32 at Sonystyle was that it gave greater dof than my P&S (which maxes out at f8 but has fairly good dof due to the small detector).
If anyone knows of any online data on dof I'd be grateful if they could share this - for example, shots of slightly offset piles of quarters taken at high F numbers with a macro lens.

3) On board Flash
My P&S has a hot shoe and I have used it - but I find that for getting into tight corners and for ease of use, the reduced bulk of the onboard flash is my preference. I do a significant amount of night macro photography because most spiders spin their webs and egg cocoons at night. Any information on shadowing while using the Sony 50 and 100mm macro lenses at close focus at night (or in daylight but this is a less good test) would be helpful here.

4) A minor issue, but is there a list/guide somewhere of the lenses that will work with the upcoming full frame detector.

Lastly, thanks to Carl for the excellent reviews and website.