In the last few years, we have seen some incredible developments in technology, particularly with electronics and multi-media devices. For instant, walk down a street, and how many people will you see either listening to music from on ipod, or looking down at their smart phone. How many of you are reading this on a phone? So there have been some massive changes, and these can be used to help us appreciate orchids, either through photography or identification.
There are plenty of advantages coming from this technological development. I’ve seen people ask the identification of some orchid they found, and instead of printing the photograph, they just leave it on their tablet or phone. It certainly saves on paper. Another outcome is that field guides, or apps for identification can be on you phone or tablet, so instead of carrying around a library of books, you only need to take a phone. At present, I have four orchid books on my phone, and can check the identification and know straight away what I have found! I think it is great.
Glossodia major ~ Purple Cockatoo Orchid
I have been amazed at the quality of the pictures that my phone takes. For those wondering, my phone is the Samsung Galaxy S2, and it has an eight megapixel camera. I still have to coax it to get the macro shots in focus, but I tend to use my hand to focus, and then remove my hand away when I take the picture. However I still have to do that with my compact digital. Since I bought my phone, I’ve found myself using it as my primary camera, partly because it is so much easier to see the phone screen in the sunlight than my camera screen.
Arachnorchis tentaculata ~ King Spider Orchid
Now, the smart phones also come with GPS. I have not experimented much with this, but I suspect it may not be as good as some of the GPSs that are on the market. This is probably an area that still needs to be worked on, but there’s potential.
Petochilus carnea ~ Pink Fingers
You might be interested that all the pictures on this post were taken with my phone. None of the pictures have been edited. I still take out the compact digital camera if I am planning to video orchids (phone tends to focus on background rather than flower when filming) or if I need to use optical zoom.
OrchidNotes 
Nice photos. Actually I have the same phone but find it impossible for plant-photos or any kind of macro. So hopefully I have a real macro at hand when I find the wild orchids.. But you have better luck, and probably bigger flowers than me… 😉
Actually I found the original camera that came with the phone rather awkward to use. You need to go into settings and charge it to macro. I actually use a different camera app, and if you view this on your phone you can download it will the link below. It automatically focuses. However if it is not focusing, I place my hand behind the flower to focus and remove when taking the picture.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moblynx.cameraics
Also our orchids are very small. In the last picture on this post, the flower is as large as your thumb nail.