Photogeekery - cellphone camera gadget.
May. 30th, 2012 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pathology_docCourtesy of YouTube, I learned of the existence of simple clip-on lenses for iPhones and such, at a place called photojojo.com. I saw one that seemed to be a generic, not-necessarily-limited-to-iPhone deal, so I thought I'd give it a whirl and see what it was like.
How it works is this - they sell you one of three lenses (or the full set of three) - a fisheye, a wide-angle or a 2x telephoto, along with an adhesive-backed iron ring. The ring gets stuck to your PDA or camera around the camera lens; the lens simply gets pulled out of your pocket and clipped to the ring. Hey presto! Sounds easy!
Here is how it works out in practice. This is a photo, with the electronic zoom pushed up to max:
This is a photo, settings unchanged, with the 2x lens (the only one I bought) clipped on and pointed in as close to the same place as possible:
It certainly brings you closer. The file size is 423KB for the first, 321KB for the second, which seems to imply a bit of data loss somewhere, possibly due to cropping effects and a lens/phonecam mismatch. My phonecam is a 2MP affair which always seems to have a bit of "shake" built in unless I try really hard to hold the thing steady.
In short - if you really want telephoto capability, get a small pocket digital camera or trade up to a better phone with a higher-res camera. But if you don't want to do that or can't, these little things - which are really small and easy to carry - will improve your "reach" if you really need it, at the cost of about $25 a lens plus P&H. Those lucky enough to own an iPhone will find a somewhat broader range of accessories more closely matched to the camera, including a little gadget from Belkin that gives you a better grip for proper "Iphone photography", in addition to superior zoom, wide angle, fisheye and even macro lenses (google "Olloclip" and see where that gets you). This goes right up to and including the ludicrous extreme of an adaptor for linking iPhones to Canon DSLR lenses - at which point, I think it's fair to say, you should probably just buy the bloody camera body and be done with it.
(Edited 31 May to update a link and remove a thereby-outdated footnote.)
How it works is this - they sell you one of three lenses (or the full set of three) - a fisheye, a wide-angle or a 2x telephoto, along with an adhesive-backed iron ring. The ring gets stuck to your PDA or camera around the camera lens; the lens simply gets pulled out of your pocket and clipped to the ring. Hey presto! Sounds easy!
Here is how it works out in practice. This is a photo, with the electronic zoom pushed up to max:
This is a photo, settings unchanged, with the 2x lens (the only one I bought) clipped on and pointed in as close to the same place as possible:
It certainly brings you closer. The file size is 423KB for the first, 321KB for the second, which seems to imply a bit of data loss somewhere, possibly due to cropping effects and a lens/phonecam mismatch. My phonecam is a 2MP affair which always seems to have a bit of "shake" built in unless I try really hard to hold the thing steady.
In short - if you really want telephoto capability, get a small pocket digital camera or trade up to a better phone with a higher-res camera. But if you don't want to do that or can't, these little things - which are really small and easy to carry - will improve your "reach" if you really need it, at the cost of about $25 a lens plus P&H. Those lucky enough to own an iPhone will find a somewhat broader range of accessories more closely matched to the camera, including a little gadget from Belkin that gives you a better grip for proper "Iphone photography", in addition to superior zoom, wide angle, fisheye and even macro lenses (google "Olloclip" and see where that gets you). This goes right up to and including the ludicrous extreme of an adaptor for linking iPhones to Canon DSLR lenses - at which point, I think it's fair to say, you should probably just buy the bloody camera body and be done with it.
(Edited 31 May to update a link and remove a thereby-outdated footnote.)