Oh wow! I love that vibrant green colour! You managed to capture the detail rather nicely.
Right? I like how you can see all the little fuzzy stuff, the spikes on their legs, the little light colored dots, the fine details, so much of that actually came across really well for this ancient phone that hardly ever takes good pictures, and the fact that they came out so well was arguably as interesting to me than the grasshopper was. Such a soft little guy, too, I think they had just molted, because their body wasn't hard whatsoever, they were super delicate, like wet paper. I was real gentle with them.
I feel like this has bleached a tiny bit. Focus is good, as is DOF which is always the challenge with macro work - well, that and getting the subject to stay still, which you've taken rather a direct approach to - but I feel it could have been a better and more distinct photo with slightly less exposure. Just a minor niggle, and as an occasional insect photographer myself I can completely understand the difficulties of the subject.
Yeah, it wasn't meant to be anything professional, and I won't even pretend that it is. It was just something quick I took as I caught the grasshopper, got out my phone and just snapped a couple pictures where I happened to be standing before letting them go. No regard for lighting, backdrop, any of that, and I'm just surprised the pictures turned out clear enough is the big thing, as I could barely see the screen through my sunglasses. It was hot as balls outside, so I definitely wasn't wasting time doing anything advanced. Certainly evidenced by the way I'm holding the grasshopper rather than taking a picture of them sitting on the grass or crawling on the fence. I just went "sweet, a grasshopper", grabbed them, took a couple quick pictures, and that was it. They certainly weren't happy about being held and were squirming and kicking at me, but an entire childhood spent doing nothing but catching grasshoppers taught me that holding them like that pretty much makes them useless, unable to do much of anything, nor bite. Just got to watch the really big ones, the spikes on their legs hurt a bit when they kick. But that tiny little guy never stood a chance. Was at least chill enough once I put them back on the grass afterward and went on my way.
To say it's challenging to photograph bugs is to present an understatement, hehe. When it comes to insects, it's amazing how much you're at the mercy of the weather. Too bright and you're fighting with overexposure, too overcast and your camera needs to have such a slow shutter speed to make up for it, everything seems a little fuzzy.
Not to mention, I take pictures with an iPhone 7 - not exactly the easiest thing to get decent quality pictures with these days. The focus on this thing is...iffy, to say the least. It often has troubles staying focused, and it hardly ever gets the exposure just right, always being darker or brighter than it should be. It's nowhere near as good as the camera on the current generation phones whatsoever.
Yeah the '7 is a bit out of date now. You might get more control over it using a specialised photography app rather than the built-in one. That way you can set a fixed focus and move the camera to accommodate, rather than relying on it being able to track a small target. If your hand hadn't been there for it to focus on, it probably wouldn't have worked at all.
That's actually a good point, and I never knew there was a photography app. That might be useful at some point if I ever got into more professional picture taking. But yeah, this phone is a piece of crap that was outdated years ago. It's a relic of the oldest smartphones still supported by the carrier, and it desperately needs an upgrade one of these days. I've seen what cameras on newer phones can take, and it's astonishing, to say the least.
