This may be too technically complicated to achieve at this point, but it would be great if there could be an “bug mode” in the app for observing insects and arachnids. Whenever I point my camera at an interesting spider suspended in its web, the camera auto focuses on whatever is behind it, which c…

Most people taking phone pics are using the Camera app on their phone, which you would then have to take this up with the Apple/Samsung devs. For a DIY “Bug Mode” I’d suggest: Holding paper or a hand behind the insect (also works for plants etc).This decreases the focal length of your camera and m…

Do you have a macro mode on your camera? I bought a digital camera specifically with a good macro mode (it’s a Ricoh WG-6). Bonus, it’s also waterproof and drop resistant. Your phone camera probably has a macro mode as well.

Just attach a simple, cheap lens to your smartphone camera. It works great. I attach the lens with a rubber band. I learned this trick somewhere on this forum and it’s changed my iNat life! Now you can focus on very close bugs as if you had a macro mode. Many thanks to the people who shared this …

Many phone cameras also have a “focus lock” feature. I use this all the time for close up bugs. I point my camera at something close up that doesn’t have background noise and isn’t moving, hold my finger on the screen (this is the method on my phone to lock the focus), then point it back to the bug …

You can tap the screen (on IOS devices at least) to focus on the particular part of the screen you touch, not sure it would work for something with no background, but it worked for this https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178452633

I use my iPhone 13pro as my camera. On mine there is a yellow circle with a flower icon on the screen when in closeup mode. Otherwise it is a white flower icon with a slash. Make sure this is turned on ( tap the icon). Then I ‘guesstimate’ the closest safe distance from phone to subject, and prefocu…

I feel like a manual focus slider would solve this? Not sure how hard it’d be to implement on the app though.

I used clip-on macro lenses for my phone for a long time. It’s a cheap and really easy way of getting good photos of small arthropods. I used it for all of these observations (at least all the macro ones), which include some of these images: [image] [image] [image] [image]

amazing images! What is the brand of the lens you use?

Yow , I agree your clip-on lens produces really nice photos. I tried several different ones and none of them gave me that depth of field. Only part of the subject item would be in focus with the ones I tried.

Observing arthropods with a phone camera

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Observing arthropods with a phone camera

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