I used to shoot without flash, at f/8 1/320 (and with IS enabled, yes, my hands are that shaky), but of course, that meant using high ISOs at times.Having you aperture that hight, you are using flashlight? I do sometimes set mine at f8 too. But depends what I'm shooting.for macro, mine is almost always fixed at f/8. I rarely use f/11 and never smaller than that, as it produces a lot of softness due to diffraction. sometimes I go wider than f/8 to get a more blurry background, but as the DoF becomes thinner, I usually step back a bit, sacrificing magnification and cropping in post.
I tried to use flash, but didn't like the results I got when using a couple different diffusers, until I found one of these.