iPhone Accessory Lens Review

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Splintercat
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iPhone Accessory Lens Review

Post by Splintercat » April 20th, 2014, 8:15 pm

I promised I'd post a review of the accessory lens set I purchased from Photojojo.com a few months ago. While buying through Photojojo was perhaps the most fun of any purchase I've ever made online, the $99 set of magnetic lens attachments are a decidedly mixed bag. So, here's a rundown of which lens might be useful and which I would recommend taking a pass on:

First, you'll get your lenses in several paper boxes. Organizing them is up to you, made more complicated by the fact that they have tiny plastic lens caps on the front and even tinier magnetic base cap for the camera end of the lens -- tiny, tiny parts that you WILL lose if you don't organize your kit. I opted for a piece of black poly-foam I'd saved and cut to fit into a small cosmetic case (about the dimension of two packs of playing cards, stacked):

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I do NOT recommend heading out with these lenses jangling around your pocket, so some sort of container is a must. They're also hard to tell apart with the lens caps on, so one advantage of my custom case is that I know where each lens resides.

Now, each of the lenses attached magnetically to a metal ring that you stick to your camera, surrounding the lens -- it's basically a metal washer. One immediate problem with encountered is that the hole that my old camera sleeve left for the lens wasn't big enough to allow for the Photojojo lens mount and lenses -- so after hunting around a bit, I found that the Speck camera sleeves are the best option (tack on another $15 to the cost of having fun lenses for your iPhone!)

Okay, onto the lens review! For a baseline comparison, here's the scene I tested the lenses on at White River Falls -- as captured with my iPhone 4S without lens attachment:

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The first lens in this demo is a "Wide Angle Macro" that produced this "wide" view:

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Right off the bat, you can see a couple themes that recur with these lenses: vignetting in the corners and loss of focus as you move away from the center of the image. For me, these compromises make the wide angle function useless for this lens. But what about the macro function? Well, it can do this:

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So, not bad in the Macro mode -- and I could see wildflower photographers using this lens solely for this function, for example. Otherwise, I'd skip it.

The next in my lens set is the "2x Telephoto" which produced this result:

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Again, vignetting a problem (especially on the left) and lost of focus near the edges. In my opinion, the tradeoff of focus is greater than the loss of resolution that you'd get from simply cropping a standard iPhone image -- so another lens that I'd skip.

Next up is the lens that I REALLY wanted to work -- the "Polarizer" attachment. It has a tiny dial to adjust for polarizing effect, just like a large polarizer lens. But my initial frustration is that the dial is stiff enough to turn that the entire lens just spins on the magnetic mountain, instead -- which, of course, doesn't achieve the polarizing effect since the two glass elements are both moving. Ugh! After fiddling a bit, here is a shot with "minimum" polarizing effect, for comparison:

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...and here's a shot with "maximum" polarizing effect:

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You can definitely see a difference -- the reflection on the water, obviously, but also the better color saturation overall from glare reduction. Even better, while this lens still has vignetting issues, it holds focus much better (largely because this is really just a filter, not a true lens, so less distortion). So, I'll give the polarizer a qualified "buy" recommendation -- worth the money if you don't mind fiddling with it -- or cropping out the vignettes.

Now, onto a couple exotics. First, the "Fisheye" which produced this image:

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Interesting as a curiosity, but it doesn't remotely compete with the built-in pano function of the iPhone that took this image from the same spot:

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So, save your money on the fish eye attachment... which brings me to the "Super Fisheye" lens, which produces this:

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Er... I think there's a waterfall in there somewhere? Ugh. Making matters worse, this lens is the largest (and thus bulkiest) in the set shown at the top of this post, so despite quality construction and glass, it just makes horrible images. Save you rmoney!

That's it! One lonely "buy" recommendation for the polarizer, and a qualified one at that. I'll be leaving the rest of these home to collect dust in the future -- and wishing I could have the $70 or so that I would have saved had i just picked up the polarizer to begin with -- a word to the wise!

Better yet, just use your iPhone as is, with it's limitations accepted. It's fun, convenient and takes remarkable photos that even the best attachments don't really improve on all that much.

My two cents!

Tom :)

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BrianEdwards
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Re: iPhone Accessory Lens Review

Post by BrianEdwards » April 20th, 2014, 9:03 pm

Tom,

Thanks for the info. I've been using the iPhone 5s exclusively lately, and was wondering about attachments. A polarizer would be very worthwhile for water shots, but I kinda was wondering about the usefulness of the others. Your post confirms my suspicion that the iphone camera is pretty good like it is. Saved me some money :) The pano feature is basically a built in wide angle, it's exactly what the iphone was missing for many nature shots.

Nice choice of location for the test
Clackamas River Waterfall Project - 95 Documented, 18 to go.

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Splintercat
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Re: iPhone Accessory Lens Review

Post by Splintercat » April 20th, 2014, 9:19 pm

Hey Brian! Yes, I was up there on Friday. Just me and about 3 other people down in the canyon, so quite a nice break from the summer mob scene... plus, a lot prettier with the spring flowers and water levels!

I love the iPhone pano, but it still pays to set up the tripod and do a multi-frame dSLR set when you've got a memorable image -- for example, here's the small falls about 1/3 mile downstream from the powerhouse with the iPhone:

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Same scene with my Olympus w/polarizer, 11mm lens and five vertical images at 1/8 second, merged:

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Not even close! Plus, I can plot the Oly pano at 30+ inches wide for a neat wall photo -- wouldn't dare do that with the iPhone pan, of course! :? But I often find myself shooting a quickie iPhone pano, then after looking at it on screen, deciding to set up the tripod and take a multi-exposure dSLR pano, so they sort of work in tandem that way.

-Tom :)

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