I’ve had a number of people say they take smartphone photos through a clip-on lens, but I have bought several versions and none work. My camera switches to some strange mode and won’t hold an image through them. Is this something about an iPhone X? Can I make it stop? Thanks to anyone with an idea!
Are you putting it over the correct lens? The iPhone X has two lenses. On my iPhone XS, it works if the clip-on lens is over the top lens (which is the wide angle lens). If you’re putting it in the middle, that might confuse the camera since both lenses will likely be blocked.
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they act as a diopter which effectively shortens the focal range. If you would normally take a photo and be able to focus from, say, half a metre, then with the diopter you would need to get to about 50-100mm from the subject. Not being able to focus and jumping around modes would suggest it is not picking up anything in the effective focal range.
another possibility is that some of these “kits” come with multiple configurations, eg fisheye, zoom, wide angle, macro etc. If it is that type, you need to strip it back to just the one element.
Also watch out for plastic lenses, which scratch easily and consequently don’t last long, and the more expensive ones are compensating sets of lenses that need to work together (it will say “macro with 3 elements” etc. The Raynox kits are this 3 element type.
One final (unlikely) problem could be light levels, try adding extra light onto the subject (experiment with a cooperative test subject, like a coin!
You are correct, @kaipatiki_naturewatc. They are specific to Android and Windows. If you have Adobe’s Lightroom you can do the same merge of GPS data using a GPS track. Any GPS works as long as you can export a .gpx file. I am just in the process of figuring out the best Mac alternatives for a workshop I will be teaching in a few months. When I decide on what to use I will create a new post here in the community.
@tiwane is correct. I spent some time with a friend and her iPhone and we found that if you put it over just the top lens it works fine. The other option is a larger lens that covers both of the camera lenses. I have a 15x lens that is 37mm in diameter and it seems to work really well on her phone and really makes a difference on the depth of field. Instead of only about 5mm depth of field it is about 6 times that and works really well. I wish I could find a 20x lens in the larger diameter that was good but relatively inexpensive. This is the lens I am talking about: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B071JN1PVT.
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Thanks orwinr, that will be good. I can’t make a gpx file with what I have.
OK so clearly I needed an anatomy lesson on my phone camera! Thanks, I will figure out how the lenses work and try your suggestion.
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This is a bit of a rehash of what some others have said, but I have found a way to iNat very efficiently, which is th only way I am able to contribute, as I seem to be pretty busy.
First, I got a cheap bridge camera to replace my monstrous dslr with tele lens. So I am able to take it anywhere with me. Under $500, and it syncs to my phone’s GPS, but most importantly, it auto-downloads photos to my phone using the Nikon software.
Second, I set up Google photos to auto backup the app that imports the photos from the camera.
Third, I take smartphone pictures whenever possible.
So then when I get home I have all my photos in Google photos, with GPS coordinates, and I can simply scroll through, crop or lighten whichever photos I need to in Photos, and then share directly into the app. WIth the AI to suggest IDs, the whole process takes very little time.
Not sure if that helps, but for anyone consiering it, the bridge camera totally revolutionized iNat for me.
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The only thing that could save me time (and it would save a lot of time) would be getting the perfect shot on the first image, not having to take series of 10+ and sort through them all later. I average 1,000 photos a day on normal field days, up to 3,000 on excessive days. This takes days to sort out.
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I wish I had gps. Actually, I do, that is my camera does but it needs to move to connect to a smartphone and I am still on flip phone so that is out.
I also set a time limit (one hour per night) and remember that I will catch up in winter.
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Couldn’t be better said…
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I spend several hours a day taking photos, editing, uploading, and id’ing. I can relate.
I take GPS coordinates with the inat android app for every important species, and if I am staying in a small spot, every 15 minutes or so to make sure all my GPS are accurate within a few feet. I occasionally photograph a lot of bugs in a small spot which saves me a little processing time, and use the duplicate feature when uploading them so I don’t have to add GPS every time.
On small creatures, there is no way for me to avoid the editing time. I use Lightroom, because small features are often necessary to ID insects. I must have the DSLR, and mine doesn’t have a GPS feature. It’s an extra add-on I would have to buy.
On many plants I can get by with a phone photo, but still sometimes take a couple shots with the DSLR for added clarity. I use the time of the photos on the DSLR to sync with the time of the inat app observations and combine the photos back at the office on the computer.
My iPhone was set up to back up photos to iCloud, but the free iCloud storage soon filled and the photos could only be deleted one by one, which was time consuming beyond consideration. Thereafter every time i took photos i got iCloud notifications advising me my free storage was full. No further backups were possible, ie it didnt delete old ones and would not admit new ones. So I disabled the iCloud.
Is there a way to get round this, or do you have paid storage, or not take that many photos?
NB its nig reasllg a big issue fof me as I don’t find Photos congenial for editing and filing…but the autobackup could have been handy at times
Editing is the main thing causing the build-up of a backlog for me. It takes a few minutes to edit each photo, which adds up for a day’s worth of photos, and there are a lot of other things I’d prefer to do than edit. I don’t worry about editing with phone or point-and-shoot photos because they’re never going to look great, but with my DSLR photos I can adjust the exposure etc. and make the photo look nice, so I want to do that if I can. I’m trying to figure out how to do presets so hopefully that will help make it more efficient.
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I don’t use iCloud and it nags me to use it any time my iPhone storage gets “full” which includes times I have a gig or two of space left. Super annoying.
I have a backlog of 10+ years of photos ! I faced the same problem of continuing to build up backlog until this year when i told myself I will not create additional backlog.
I used to try to id all the photos (most lep and moth) before upload and that is one of the major bottleneck. Now I will id those which I know and leave the rest id to family level. My rational being only I can upload the photos while id can be done later and by anyone on iNat. I also recently found out that location can be pinned and that saved a lot of time. I post processed all my DSLR photos because after putting in the effort to take
the photos I want to make sure that in the best possible state for id and use by others.
I spend 1-2 hours everyday processing and uploading to iNat. I am please that I do not have any backlog for this year :-D
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