I recently bought a clip-on macro with a ring light for about $20 and I’ve been impressed with the quality for insect photos. The light was really handy for photos of a tiny moth that was hiding in some rocks.
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I use my phone to take photos, too. The first thing that made my photos better was learning how to use ‘pro mode’ instead of just the camera’s automatic focus/exposure settings. Automatic is good for some situations (getting a quick photo in if I think my subject will run away before I can make adjustments), but the photos I take when I have time to adjust the setting exactly how I want them always turn out substantially better. Using burst shot mode and just taking a lot of pictures helps, too, if the target is moving in and out of focus (e.g. flowers blowing in the wind, insects on waving plants, etc.). You’ll have a lot of junk photos to delete, but there’ll be at least one or two decent ones in there somewhere. The second was a gift a friend gave me: a clip-on attachments kit. It’s got a telephoto attachment (not as good as an actual telephoto camera, but you get the zoom without the extra grain you get from using the phone’s digital zoom), a macro lens for close up shots, and (until I accidentally lost it in a river) it had a polarizing filter, which made it easier to take brighter photos without glare from clouds or the sun or looking too ‘washed-out’.
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You can use a hand-lens too. I actually prefer that to the clip-on lenses. They are much higher quality (in general) and are not single-purpose instruments. You do have to hold them in place instead of having them attached though.
I actually keep a large magnifying lens in my backpack too as that lets me cover a larger area and makes it a bit easier to play with magnification and focus.
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A lot of folks have already given solid advice, but since you’re using a phone there is one other thing I’d add.
In many phones you can lock the focus and exposure to a specific point. On an iPhone you do this by touching the focus point on the screen until a square flashes on the screen. (not sure on other brands, but I expect it’s similar).
This is really useful as the focus on a phone tends to hunt around a lot. What you do is lock the focus to something that’s about the same color and in the same light (that gets the exposure right), then move to get the photo of the object you want. in this case you focus by physically moving the phone. Often this is the only way to get a photo of something that’s free standing, like a spider hanging in a web or an insect on a stick or blade of grass. Usually in those cases the phone will focus on the background instead, which is really frustrating.
Another thing that can help is to use the phone’s buttons to take the photo instead of tapping the virtual button on the screen. Tapping the virtual button on the screen often is clumsy and knocks the phone out of focus as it pushed it forward a bit. It also often results in an unsteady grip too. In many phones the volume buttons can be used instead. These tend to be better options for taking photos as the motion is perpendicular to the line of focus, you have an actual tactile button to use, and it separates the screen from the action of taking the photo, making the phone behave more like a camera.
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Here is a video I made that shows how to take good pictures of mushrooms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ea7ReXeYN4&ab_channel=Mycodocs
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Start with cheap one with “mega zoom” like powershot line from Canon, you need to check settings for it, learn ho to use manual mode, without it camera will do weird stuff as it is not that smart. e.g. for long time I hade those small cameras, I didn’t know how physically people got normal pics of birds in flight, cause I didn’t know about settings and how to use them. For starts settings + normal zoom is all you need for bird pics. Powerhot line also good for macro as it can focus on things that almost sit on its lenz.
examples from 10 years ago:
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You don’t really need to buy a new camera if it’s out of your budget, but if you get a decent one that comes in your budget, buy it. For taking good photos birds you need at least 15-20x optical zoom, but if you wanna focus on other critters you can approach close to (like insects or plant) you don’t really need camera, phone camera works fine. I also myself used only phone to take photos for 4-5 months until a friend of mine gave me his old camera which I currently use (it has 18x optical zoom as well as macro mode, so I can use it for birds as well as insects and plants).
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You just gained a subscriber!
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That’s a great tip about focusing on the bird’s eye. It took me a while to figure that one out on my own!
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I’m not a professional photographer, but photography can be a complicated endeavour. It essentially breaks down into two phases - the picture taking, and post picture production. I grew up with film, but the concepts are the same. Picture taking involves variables such as lens quality, film size and quality, filters, shutter speed, f-stop, light quality and exposure time, composition of the picture (and probably a few more I’ve forgotten about). Post picture production involves cropping the picture, filters (again), exposure time, etc. I used an enlarger and paper, but digital cameras have programs that can do the same things. I know nothing about them - I simply adjust brightness and contrast, but I just want an identifiable picture! Modern cameras have video, burst shooting and a ton of other features which I do not use. One advantage to digital is that you can take a bunch of shots, look at them right away and keep or discard. Film involved taking pictures until the roll was finished and then processing the film onto paper to finally see what you had. Expensive and time consuming!
If your dream is to become a pro, my advice would be to keep practicing with the phone camera, read as much as you can about photography and it’s principles, save up for a decent camera and work up from there. Oh, and one more thing - luck plays a part in all these processes.
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What’s a great shot? Is this a great shot https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/70554272 ?
I can barely see the bird in that shot. I know what it is though. And I guess it looks ok. Not luck, I was standing there for maybe an hour and took hundreds of shots.
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In terms of artistic side it is pretty solid one, and you can be sure it’s Corvus. 
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I guess what I’m saying is that 99.9% of my observations are, essentially, snapshots. The 0.1% of my photos that I consider great (and not many of them are on iNat) take time, planning and patience. They don’t always have a lot of detail, but enough to make ID possible. There’s lots of really good advice in this thread about cameras and lenses but at the end of the day I personally don’t think camera and lenses are something to worry about a lot. Thinking about what you want to show is more important, whether it’s artistic or otherwise. Some of my best shots I drew by hand ;)
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After too many blurry photos from phone movement I got a Bluetooth remote. Fewer blurry photos.
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I guess you (user) need to do your best, but always keep in mind why you’re making those shots, e.g. if it’s for iNat and I know it on’t be something great anyway, I don’t spend too much time on that, result may look like I had no idea what I was doing, but it saves me time. I hate when people say that subject is more important and there’re tons of good pics so why bother, it all sounds lazy to me and it’s never said by great photographers from my experience, but for iNat quality doesn’t matter as long as organism is idable, it’s not a photo site.
Ugh, art is incredible, e.g. Lars Jonsson art is something beyond real for me, so I appreciate it!
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For iNat I, generally, try to photograph key features of the organism; i.e. so that a person can pick up a key and ID it. This is pretty hard a lot of the time because if I’m photographing something I don’t always know what characters the keys use. A “great” (non artistic) observation, to me, would include every character needed to key the organism out. I rarely achieve that. But, making a great observation in this sense doesn’t require special equipment
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To me for taking these kinds of shots to put on iNat ,a bridge type (or whatever they’re calling it these days!) “super zoom” is the most practical and flexible. For almost 20 years now I’ve basically only used a Canon Powershot S1 IS and S3 IS, and then the Panasonic Lumix FZ200 and FZ300. Purchased new they were all around $400. None were pocketable like a cell phone, but they are way smaller, lighter, and cheaper than a DSLR. They could be small because the sensors are small. With bigger sensors comes less noisy photos with more detail and better quality crops, but then you also need a much bigger camera with very large lenses to be able to photograph things far away. Personally, I’m not really comfortable walking around with thousands of dollars of heavy gear on me.
I like that with these cameras I can hold a bug on my fingertip and hold it right up to the lens for a closeup, then see a high flying hawk and quickly zoom in on that to take a photo without having to switch lenses. I still crop most of my photos and the crops aren’t as good as they would be with a DSLR, but they are certainly good enough for looking at on a screen and making an id. I also like doing telephoto closeups which means I can be three feet away from a small butterfly and zoom in 24x on it to fill the frame. The past couple of years I’ve also started using a closeup clip on lens Raynox DCR-150 which really helps get clearer shots of very tiny things( <1cm) from farther away. It’s trickier to use, but fun and was only about $65 new. Since it just clips on to the camera lens I can use it with other cameras too. These types of cameras have plenty of options for automatic modes and full manual modes and many have a hotshoe for adding an extra flash if necessary. I love having a camera with a fully articulating screen too, which comes in handy for photographing things at odd angles.
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First of all, this advice is excellent: [quote=“kmagnacca, post:9, topic:23090”]
For starters, don’t ever use the zoom on a phone camera.
[/quote] The best choice for you is a so called bridge camera like the Canon PowerShot SX 40/50/70/540 or the Nikon CoolPix P500 / 900 / 1000. There is a whole range of prices you can find according to your budget. Then you have to learn how to use it …
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Your question is a good one in that the definition of great needs to be made in the discussion. Is it great for identification purposes (record shot) or is it great because it is aesthetically pleasing (artistic shot)? A great record shot may not necessarily be a great artisitc shot and vice versa. Conversely, the two can coexist.
Artistic shot composition has certain elements that can be socio-culturally influenced and economically driven.
Record shot composition has certain elements that can be taxa specific. Does it tick off the boxes to prove the criteria needed to define the organism to species? Is meeting that criteria limited by the reach/definition of the equipment? If one is lucky and/or skilled, form follows function and the result is also aesthetically pleasing.
Both take planning/timing. Both take pratice. With enough practice comes speed to the point of it becoming intuitive. Understanding the limits of one’s skill set and one’s equipment can result in something great. Not understanding can result in something not so hot. And then sometimes it is just kismet and it works despite everything.
Your image is aesthetically pleasing (awesome) - compositional elements are present, there is the rule of thirds, texture, negative space, the eye is drawn to a point, there is enough space to comfortably imagine forward movement of the subject, there is two tone contrast. As far as a record shot it is somewhat limited - it is a bird, it is likely a corvid, it is maybe a Torresian Crow with assumption on what it is not.
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In principle correct, but I don’t fully agree:
don’t ever use the zoom on a phone camera. … That’s basically the same as taking a full-size picture and blowing it up, so it’s no better resolution than taking it without zooming and then cropping the photo [/quote]
While the resolution might not be better, for smaller objects it helps you determine if the target is actually in focus (e.g. an insect on a blade of grass). I often use the zoom, then freeze the camera focus and move the phone to get the correct distance. Additionally, no need to crop afterwards for direct upload to iNat
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