If you have ever tried to photograph a jumping spider and ended up with 40 blurry shots of where it was a millisecond ago, you are not alone. Invertebrate photography is frustrating because the subjects are small, fast, and completely indifferent to your artistic vision. But a good photo of your animals is satisfying in a way that is hard to overstate, and you do not need expensive gear to get there.
Phone cameras are fine
Most decent phone cameras from the last few years can take surprisingly good macro shots. The trick is getting close enough without the autofocus hunting endlessly. If your phone has a macro mode, use it. If not, a clip-on macro lens for your phone costs about five to ten pounds and makes a real difference. These screw-on or clip-on lenses sit over the phone's camera and reduce the minimum focus distance, letting you fill the frame with a small animal.
The main limitation of phone cameras is depth of field. At macro distances, the plane of focus is razor thin. On a jumping spider, you might get the front pair of eyes sharp and everything behind them blurred. That is actually quite a nice look for jumping spiders, but for something like an isopod where you want the whole animal in focus, it can be annoying. There is not much you can do about this on a phone without stacking software, so accept it and work with it.
Lighting matters more than the camera
The single biggest improvement you can make to invertebrate photography is better light. Natural daylight from a window is excellent. Direct sunlight is too harsh and creates deep shadows, but indirect window light on an overcast day is about as good as it gets without any equipment at all.
If you are shooting in the evening or in a room without good natural light, a desk lamp with a daylight-temperature LED bulb works well. Avoid the yellowish light from standard warm-white bulbs, which makes everything look orange and murky. A ring light designed for phone photography is another cheap option that gives even, diffused illumination.
Flash is tricky with small invertebrates. Built-in camera flash tends to create harsh reflections off glossy exoskeletons and washes out colour. If you do use flash, bouncing it off a white card or diffusing it through tissue paper softens it considerably. Some macro photographers use a DIY diffuser made from a piece of white plastic taped over the flash. It looks ridiculous but the results are miles better than direct flash.
Getting the animal to cooperate
It will not cooperate. Accept this. The best invertebrate photos come from patience rather than control.
Jumping spiders are the most photogenic because they look directly at the camera. Their anterior median eyes face forward, so a head-on shot gives you that characteristic face that people find so appealing. Getting them to face you is a matter of positioning yourself in front of them and waiting. They are curious animals and will often turn to look at you, especially if you move slowly. Quick movements make them jump away.
Beetles are relatively easy to photograph because they are slow. Place them on a plain surface and let them walk. They will usually pause periodically, which is your moment. A piece of bark or a leaf makes a more interesting background than a kitchen counter. Flower beetles like Pachnoda marginata have bright colours that photograph well in natural light.
Isopods are best photographed in their enclosure if possible, or on a piece of bark or leaf litter that gives them somewhere to grip. They tend to curl or ball up when disturbed (if they are an Armadillidium species), which actually makes for a good photo if you time it right.
Millipedes photograph well because they are large and slow. The challenge is getting the whole animal in frame if it is a large species like Archispirostreptus gigas, since at macro distances the depth of field issue means only part of the animal will be sharp. A wider shot from slightly further back can work better for showing the full animal.
Backgrounds and composition
A plain background makes the animal stand out. A piece of black card, a clean bit of cork bark, or a simple leaf works well. Cluttered backgrounds are the enemy of good invertebrate photos because the animal gets lost in the visual noise.
Get low. Eye level with the animal is almost always more interesting than shooting from above. For a jumping spider on a table, that means getting your phone or camera right down to table height. For an isopod on substrate, it means angling the camera down into the enclosure at the animal's level rather than shooting straight down.
Editing
A small amount of editing goes a long way. Cropping tighter to the animal, bumping up the brightness slightly, and increasing the contrast a touch are usually all you need. The free editing tools built into most phone galleries handle this well. Avoid cranking the saturation up, which is tempting with colourful beetles but makes the image look unnatural quickly.
If you want to get more serious, focus stacking is the technique that produces those razor-sharp macro images where the entire animal is in focus. It involves taking multiple shots at slightly different focus distances and combining them in software. There are free apps that do this, though the results vary. It requires a very still subject, which rules out anything that moves quickly.
Mostly, just take a lot of photos. The ratio of good shots to total shots in macro photography is terrible. Professional macro photographers will tell you the same thing. Shoot twenty, keep one. That is normal.