I ran into an Apple optical engineer and explained iNat to him. I expressed my dissatisfaction with getting really good images of small insects in the field. He was interested in improvements that might help iNat members (and maybe help drive iPhone sales). I thought resolution was the most signif…

ProShot (available for Apple and Android) gives you great manual control, including focus. It’s pretty inexpensive too. Worth checking out if you want more control.

That’s one that should be easier to implement using existing camera abilities. There are some decent stacking phone apps already out there too. A while back, I purchased a clip-on ‘microscope’ for my Android phone (an old Samsung Note 8) and shot some short 4k vid clips moving slightly in and out. …

Alternative camera apps have been mentioned. For some, that may be the way to go. However, after switching to a non-Apple camera app, I found out the hard way that not all camera apps are created equal . Let the user beware!

A larger sensor would be the maor one, as that’s a huge factor in limiting image quality. A phone’s form factor places hard limits on sensor size though.

can you please write a tutorial on what you did or share any other similar link to what you did end-to-end for first timers?

the mobile industry has always been toying with external lens for phones but i guess its still long way until it will become marketable product. and its still atypical for iphones market i guess but we never know how behaviours change eventually. here are two concepts from 2025 - Xiaomi modular len…

Sony did this a long time ago with their Q-series and while it was a cool idea it never took off. Just too awkward. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Cyber-shot_DSC-QX100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_ILCE-QX1 https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1040220037/first-look-sony-qx10-qx100-mobile-ca…

My #1 problem with taking pictures of bugs on an iPhone is that the phone always wants to focus on the background, no matter how much I click on the bug or try to make the bug take up the entire center of the frame. Manual focus is not the solution. Manual focus is virtually impossible with tiny bug…

If you look at plant observations in iNat, almost all closeups include someone’s hand. That’s to tell the phone where to focus–everyone does it. When you see a really good closeup picture of a plant, it’s almost been taken with a conventional camera. The hold and lock focus for iPhone has never been…

I tried Halide but didn’t do great with it. I think it’s partly because I had gotten addicted to the image-processing things the iPhone camera does without even realizing it. But, I also think trying to approximate what you get with a single-lens-reflex 35 mm camera without having all of the easy-to…

What upgrades would you like on your iPhone camera to take more useful photos for iNat?

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What upgrades would you like on your iPhone camera to take more useful photos for iNat?

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