This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500.
[taken with an Apple iPhone 3G & $20 macro lens]
There's a cliché in photography that the best camera is the one you have with you. Recently, the camera most people have with them is a cell phone.
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By stacking a small magnifying lens on top of the iPhone's existing lens, I can focus as close as a centimeter. Perfect for small subjects like this spiny Micrathena orb weaver.
The optics of both the iPhone and the add-on lens are cheap, and the phone's sensor is small & noisy, so this simple hack won't by itself launch a glamorous career as a nature photographer. But photos for a blog? This works just fine.
The key to solid camera phone images is the same as for any kind of photography- look for a strong composition. To make the top photo, I moved the camera around until I found an angle where the spider's body was framed nicely by the evening sky filtering through the trees. For the bottom photo, I opted for a high impact head-on shot.