How To Take Good Up-Close Phone Photos of Bugs

So, I love identifying bugs¹ for people online. It’s like solving tiny little mysteries. But often it’s hard for people to get a photo of the bug to begin with, because it’s just so small or fast-moving and all they have is a phone. This post isn’t about getting into phone macro photography; this is a quick guide for taking a basic photo that’s good enough for ID.

• Don’t take a fucking video
• Immobilize the bug
• Use magnification
• Light it up
• Lock focus
• Caveat about ID

Don’t take a fucking video

Phones can typically take higher-resolution still photos than video. This means that even an out-of-focus still photo is better than an out-of-focus video frame. Plus, if you are uploading it somewhere like Facebook or Reddit, the video will be compressed to reduce file size, making it much lower-quality.

Also, shaky handheld videos make me (and no doubt others) motion sick.

Immobilize the bug

It’s harder to get an in-focus picture of something that’s moving, so if your bug is fast-moving or particularly small, hold it still by trapping it with clear sticky tape or in a glob of hand sanitizer.

This kills the crab bug, so if you want to keep it alive, you can also try putting it in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes, which will temporarily slow it down or knock it out. You can also put it in a ziploc bag to limit its movement. Bugs don’t need much air and will be fine in the bag for the length of time it takes to take photos.

Immobilizing the bug can also help you get photos from multiple angles. This is especially helpful if you aren’t sure which side is its back and which side is its belly!

Use magnification

If your phone doesn’t have a macro mode or the bug is still too small for it to be useful, you can use magnification along with your phone. A few things to try:

• a magnifying glass
• a loupe
• a laser pointer lens, like from a cat toy (I’ve personally tried this and it works just fine)
• even a drop of water!

(If you have a microscope, this post isn’t for you!)

Light it up

Brighter light helps you take a sharper photo and also shows more details. You don’t need anything fancy—daylight is fine. If it’s very bright out, even diffuse light is good enough, but if the photo is still too dark, try to get it in direct sunlight. If you’re casting a shadow on what you’re trying to get a picture of, try moving around or changing the angle.

Lock focus

Auto-focus can be unreliable with very small objects. Many camera apps let you lock the camera’s focus, e. g. by tapping the screen. You may need to look for a “manual”, “advanced”, or “pro” mode.²

First, focus the camera on a large nearby object like your hand, the ground, etc. Lock focus, then photograph your bug. Slowly move the phone a tiny bit nearer or farther until the bug is in focus, then take the picture. It can be hard to tell if something is exactly in focus, so try taking multiple photos at varying distances.

Caveat about ID

So in biological classification, organisms are sorted into ever-smaller nested groups based on how closely they are related to each other. Some of these levels of groupings, or ranks, have special names that have particular meanings.³ Insects and arachnids, for example, are classes which are divided into orders which are divided into families which are divided into genera (singular: genus) which are divided into species.⁴

With small animals like bugs, the features that distinguish one group from another are often only visible with a microscope, and the more you want to narrow it down, the subtler the differences are. And you might need, like, a PhD to even know what features to look for in the first place. So even with a perfectly good photo, it may only be possible to identify a very broad group the bug belongs to.

This can be good enough for general purposes. If you want to know whether a bug is a bedbug or a beetle, just getting to order is fine. (Bedbugs belong to order Hemiptera, beetles are order Coleoptera.) But if you want to tell two very similar-looking and/or closely related species apart—e. g. whether it’s a bedbug (Cimex lectularius) or a bat bug (Cimex pilosellus)—you’re gonna need high magnification to examine the hairs on its head. The bug’s stage of life matters too. If you want to know if that white beetle grub (family Scarabaeidae) in your garden is a pest or not, you’re going to need to examine the pattern of hairs around its anus. You get the idea. At that point, your best option might be sending an actual specimen to an actual expert.

P. S. This has nothing to do with photos, but including your geographic location is often necessary for ID. Different species are found in different parts of the world, and the quickest way to narrow it down is to look for [general group of bugs] in [general region]. There are a few common cosmopolitan species found just about everywhere, but that is not the norm.