Which of these pro camera lenses can power up your iPhone the most?
1 Trygger Camera Clip
£TBA/$39.99 bitemyapple.com
This polarising filter for your iPhone clips on much like the Olloclip and gives you more control over the colours and light in your photos. The lens is small and svelte, and it clips neatly onto the corner of the iPhone.
A wheel on the outside of the lens lets you adjust the polarisation manually to improve reflections or overly bright skies. It works nicely, although the wheel was a little stiff which meant the lens sometimes moved as we turned it. Still, we were impressed by the quality of the shots – it’s just a shame there’s no zoom functionality included.
2 Phocus 3 lens bundle
£124.99/$109.95 amazon.com
Aimed more at videographers than photographers, this pack offers a chunky case that makes gripping your iPhone much easier. There are three lenses on offer: wide angle, macro and telephoto, and they all work nicely thanks to the larger lenses. However, the pack is hugely expensive, and while the larger lenses are good, the whole pack is incredibly bulky. For serious videographers it’s a great addition to the kitbag, with plenty of additional options like microphone grips, but you can get smaller kits for much less. This one is for pros only.
3 Pixeet Pro iPhone 5/5s Pack
£79.99/$TBA pixeet.com
The Pixeet Pro Pack has a fish-eye lens that shoots at impressive 180-degree angles, as well as a case to which you clip the magnetic lens. You’ll also find attachments for setting up your iPhone with a tripod, and a telescopic monopod for steadying your shots slightly. The fish-eye effect is impressive, but it works best with the associate app, which lets you create interactive 360-degree images with just four shots. The Pro Pack is full of accessories, and it does its job, but the lens alone is only slightly better than the Olloclip’s fish-eye.
4 Tanla 12x Telephoto lens kit
£29.72/$32.90 tanla.com
The iPhone’s camera is great for the most part, but zooming in can really lower the quality of your shots. This 12x telephoto zoom lens and case combo seeks to remove that drop in quality, and the results are pretty good. The lens is heavy and well-built, but a little too large and unwieldy. Our pictures were slightly distorted by the lens, and we found the included tripod was required to avoid a wobbling picture (there’s no stabilisation in the iPhone, remember). The zoom is impressive, but this one is really just a bit of fun rather than a serious lens kit.
5 Turtleback PentaEye f – Pro
£TBA/$144 http://turtleback.hk
This spinning lens case is an interesting design, plus it’s very solidly built and held up well in our tests. With zoom, fish-eye, macro and wide-angle options, as well as an empty hole for normal shots, it checks all the boxes.
The case, like most of the lens kits, covers the flash, so don’t expect to be shooting in darker locations even through the ‘standard’ hole. What we liked was the fast switching, and the built-in grip and tripod mount. The only downside is that the lenses are a little bulky and some come without a cover.
6 Olloclip 3-in-1
£59.99/$69.99 olloclip.com
This small clip-on lens offers three different views in one lens. Unscrew the wideangle lens and you’ll find a macro option that lets you take incredible close-ups from just a few millimetres away. Flip the lens around and you’ll have a fish-eye view to take in more of the world, admittedly cropped to a circular shape. The wide-angle option doesn’t seem to do a huge amount but is good for video, while macro and fish-eye are truly impressive. We took some incredible shots with the Olloclip in our tests, and we also found it was small, easy to use and very well built.
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