17 Year Cicada Closeup
It was my good fortune to be in Iowa for the peak of the 17 Year Cicada “emergence”. It was amazing. It was also unbelievably noisy. If you stood under a cicada filled tree (they prefer some trees to others), you could barely hear well enough to have a conversation with a friend standing two feet away.
The above photo is a full frame (uncropped) closeup taken with an iPhone (resized for the web). You can’t focus this close with an unaided iPhone so I used the closeup lens on an Olloclip adapter which clips on the iPhone over the lens.
Cicada eye, cropped from the full size image.
At magnifications this high the depth of field (near to far apparent sharpness) is very shallow so most of the cicada is out of focus. But the Olloclip is a very sharp closeup adapter. In the full size original image the individual cells of the cicada’s compound eye are clearly visible.
To get this kind of magnification, the Olloclip adapter on the iPhone needs to be about 1/2 inch from your subject. If you are more than an inch away, you won’t be able to focus. You need a non-skittish, cooperative subject to get this close. (Best not to try this with rattlesnakes.) You also need a lot of light, and you need to avoid casting the iPhone’s shadow on your subject.
If you want to do ultra closeup photos with an iPhone, I highly recommend getting an Olloclip adapter.
Photo Data: iPhone 4s with Olloclip closeup adapter. 4.3 mm focal length (in 35mm: 35.0 mm). 1/40 sec, f/2.4, ISO 50.
Links
Olloclip adapters for the iPhone 4, 4S, iPhone 5, and 5S.