Photographing insects with your phone

I was so pleased with my bee photos (previous post) that I shared them on social media, which led to this exchange:

Friend: Excellent pictures. I have the blue banded bee but, try as I might, I never get a good shot!

Malcolm: Most camera-lens combinations won’t get a big enough image of an insect to get this sort of detail. I use a DSLR with a 100mm macro lens (both Canon) and add a +4 close-up “filter” (really another lens but it screws on like a filter) for the really small stuff. And then I take lots of shots and throw most of them away.

Friend: And I use my phone

Malcolm: Some phone cameras are pretty good, but you have to get so close to the insect that you usually scare it away. Practice on small flowers – see what yours will do.

Friend: That’s a good idea. I do a fair bit of flower stuff for my Instagram but practicing on insects would be fun.

Malcolm: Slow insects would be next, then. Caterpillars patiently munching leaves, assassin bugs and spiders lurking in ambush, etc. Then work your way up to to ants and bees. Butterflies and dragonflies? Only while sleeping, I think.

Friend: Oh dear. I am really not in need of another obsession…

Malcolm: But this is one that can fill in your free time while you’re waiting for a bus or a friend to turn up. All you need is your phone, some sunshine, and any scrap of garden…

My phone is nothing special – mid-range Chinese and three years old – but after that conversation I had to take it for a walk around the garden to see what it could do.

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