There are two solutions to this problem. First - get a new phone 😁 Something like the iPhone X with its dual camera setup - one wide angle and one telephoto - both image stabilised. Nice. Unfortunately, a new iPhone X isn't in my future (present or distant). I'd like to stay married. And at currently $1,500.00NZ it's more than I'm ever going to be able to justify spending on a phone. I am thinking of upgrading my iPhone 6 to a 6s Plus (hi honey) for better video quality (noteably 1080p for the front-facing camera). But that's also in the future. And it still won't fix the wide angle or telephoto shooting issues.
Enter solution number two; lens accessories for the iPhone. This is by far the cheaper, and probably easier solution to the problem of getting different focal lengths on any mobile phone - and it might just mean I stay married for a bit longer 😜 But are they any good? Great question... read on to find out how 'good' the cheaper lens accessory kits are.
First, we need a 'control' image for our little experiment - a shot taken with just the iPhone 6 main rear-facing 8MP camera - 'naked' (ooh-err) as it were - sans lens adapters. And here it is...
iPhone 6 8MP rear-facing main camera |
iPhone 6 with the Iboolo wide angle (0.63x) lens attachment |
Well, actually, it's not too bad. Centrally, it's about the same as the unadorned lens, and would certainly hold-up for video footage. It's the edges of the frame where things start to look a little soft and distorted, but not alarmingly so. I would happily use the lens for vlogging. Might keep my DSLR setup for my important landscape images though 😉 Can we go even wider still?
iPhone 6 with the Iboolo super wide angle (0.36x) lens attachment |
Top right corner with the 'super' wide. Nothing but mush! |
Just looking at the two wide-angle options, I think I would be more inclined to use the standard wide adapter on a daily basis, and keep the 'super' wide for those time when I simply have to go wider and damn the consequences. Also, it's worth noting that placing the lens attachment as centrally as possible over the phones lens is absolutely critical if you want to avoid edge distortion. I placed the clip onto the phone without any lenses attached first, so I could align the hole centrally. Then I screwed the attachment lens in place when I was happy that the holder was positioned perfectly.
iPhone 6 with Iboolo x2 Telephoto lens attachment |
iPhone 6 with Iboolo Polariser lens |
Attached to the standard wide angle (screwed in below it) is the Macro lens. The image opposite is the standard close-focusing you can get from the iPhone 6, which isn't bad, but it isn't great either.
Using the macro lens attachment (by unscrewing the standard wide angle lens that's on top of it) means you can get closer - a lot closer - for some rather impressive macro images. In fact, you can get so close, that I thought the front element of the lens was in danger of touching the plant I was photographing! When I first put the macro lens on the phone I thought it was broken - the image was all blurry, fuzzy, and out of focus.
iPhone 6 with Iboolo Macro attachment |
So that's five lenses down - three to go. The final three are what I would categorise as 'novelty' lenses. To be used sparingly (if at all). The first of these is the Fisheye lens.
iPhone 6 with Iboolo Fisheye lens |
iPhone 6 with Iboolo Kaleidoscope lens attachment |
And the last one is also really only a novelty attachment. It's a Starburst filter effect - again not something I think Ill ever use. Haven't even bothered trying it out yet to be honest.
So of the set of eight, I'm probably going to use two of them quite a bit (the wide and polariser), two occasionally (the super wide and macro), one every so often (the x2 telephoto), and three probably never (guess which three 😉).
Quality-wise, the wide and polariser are the best of the bunch, producing the cleanest and sharpest images. The super-wide is pushing it for quality, although it will still probably be ok for video footage, and the x2 telephoto is ok, but probably no better than digital cropping of the original file.
Was it worth the $30.00NZ I paid for the kit? Absolutely it was. They may not be the best quality attachment lenses ever made, but it's given me a taste of phone attachments, so I know what I'm looking for if I want to spend a little more for a better product later on. You can get some more impressive (read more expensive) wide angle attachments made specifically for the iPhone, and that might be where I'm headed in the future. But for the time being, the 8in1 lens kit from Iboolo will do the job nicely.
Have you tried their 80mm for portraits as that is the classic focal length for portraits historically ?
ReplyDeleteHi Michael. I have a few new lenses to try and a 'portrait' focal range is amongst them. Will certainly post about it when I do. Cheers
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