Compact macro function

In recent posts I've been getting to know the manual controls on my Sony compact camera. One thing I hadn't used was the macro facility, as it was only available as an 'auto' function. I've been trying it out in the past week. Partly it's good, partly it's frustrating. Because it's an auto function I can't control the aperture, so sometimes the depth of field is too shallow for the object I'm trying to photograph. Sometimes it just doesn't detect the item I'm trying to focus on and insists that I want to take a landscape image of the background! So, it's good for opportunistic macro (some examples below), but for the 'real thing' it needs to be the big camera, the tripod and the macro lens.