Malcolm Owen
Accessory producer Olloclip has introduced two new series of lenses that can be clipped onto an iPhone, with the Intro series aimed as a low-cost way for amateur photographers to change their smartphone images, while the Pro series offers higher quality lenses for prosumer or professional usage.
Olloclip's new lenses form part of the company's Connect X lens system, introduced earlier this year to add support for the iPhone X to the range, and in turn supporting the iPhone XS, covering both the rear and front cameras and allowing extra lenses to be fitted. The new Intro and Pro series lenses work with the iPhone X Clip, future iPhone attachment clips, and the Multi-Device Clip.
Previously, Olloclip offered lenses at one price point, but has extended the range with Intro and Pro to offer a variety of price points. While the Intro series is intended for novice photographers who want to make changes to how the image appears in-camera, the Pro line is on the more costly side, promising a higher quality than others offered by the firm.
The new Intro Wide Angle Lens provides both a Wide Angle and Macro lens in one product. Providing a slightly more spherical effect than Olloclip's Essential Series Super Wide Lens, the Intro version offers a better way to shoot groups and larger areas with the smartphone camera, while the built-in Macro lens can magnify a shot.
Olloclip is offering the Intro Wide Angle lens for $19.99 on its own, or from $39.95 with an attachment clip.
The Pro series consists of two separate lenses. The Super Wide lens provides a wider field of view, but at the same time providing the least amount of distortion of all lenses of this type that the company produces.
The Pro Telephoto lens offers a two-times magnification of the picture, similar to other telephoto lenses in the range. For this model, Olloclip has made it able to gather more light to help produce a brighter photograph.
Both the Pro Super Wide and Pro Telephoto lenses are offered for $99.99 each, or $119.95 with a lens attachment clip.
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3 Comments
I’ve bought a lot of different lenses for my iPhones over the years. Truthfully, no matter what the reviews have said, they’ve mostly all been close to junk. One problem is that unless Apple releases the lens designs they have, it’s tough to make an add-on lens that matches well. The second problem is centering. If the add-on is just off by a few thousands, considering the diameter of the elements in the camera, that’s enough to screw the IQ of the lens.
but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get a pretty decent lens. But most are in that $15 to $99 range. The cheaper lenses are no more than toys. The “expensive” ones can be much better, but not always. Fortunately, making smaller lenses without all the complex mechanical bodywork lenses for conventional cameras need can bring the price down without killing the optical quality too much. So my Moment macro costs $89, but it pretty good. But their tele is called a portrait lens, because it’s sharp in the middle, but not so moving outwards. That’s not really a tele lens.
I've got two Zeiss lenses for the iPhone as well, but Zeiss hasn’t moved forward on cases for newer model phones, so they sit, unused. They were pretty good.
i’ll wait a bit on these, and try the better models from the line-up. Hopefully they will be decent.