Smartphone Camera Attachments

There is no doubt that smartphone users are attached to their cameras – a good camera made a big difference in iPhone 4 and the new iPad sales. And smartphone users snap a lot of photos :

On Flickr the iPhone 4 and then iPhone 4s currently rank as the first and third most popular cameras. And with the Nokia 808 Purview camera-phone coming to market in Europe, phones and novel cameras will get ever closer entwined.

There is an attraction to making the final delivery of images directly from the camera that the point and shoot plus SLR camera makers are just getting a notion of how important it is to consumers. Hence the introduction of WiFi connections to compact cameras continues apace as they add 2 functions: 1)improved delivery to email, DropBox, Facebook, YouTube and 2)better remote control possibilities being offered by some vendors.

Low Hanging Fruit: Better Lenses

However, the low hanging fruit for smartphone cameras has been better lenses. This reviewer has been surprised given the popularity of camera phones  that no major smartphone vendor has offered a series of attachable lenses to broaden the limited range of smartphone camera shooting capabilities. Some smartphones do offer digital zoom, but the noise and consequent image quality drop off cries for an attached lens solution. However, when I looked last November at what was on offer from 3rd party lens providers – the vignetting, distortion, and other lensing defects made digital zoom look good.

But 6 months later, and there is a second wave of 3rd party attached lenses that have become quite attractive. A visit to my favorite camera shop found lens kits in the $50 to $100 range that can dramatically improve your smartphone camera capabilities. They are geared primarily for the iPhone 4 and 4S, but many of the new lens attachments work for Android and even Blackberries. And as seen below the best attached lenses are in the macro and wide-angle range:

Smartphone Camera Lens Attachments
	Phocus for iPhone 4 & 4S – $99 This add on for the iPhone 4 and 4s provides a macro and wide angle lenses along with a better grip for image taking. There is a screw mount on the bottom for attaching to a tripod as well. The unit is light, attaches/detaches quickly and snugly and quickly adds to the iPhones camera range. Wired rates it as best macro lens attachment.
	OlloClip Kit- iPhone 4 and 4S 3 lens kit for $70 This 3lens kit offers wide angle, fisheye, and macro mode lens in a snugly fitting attachment. The images rendered by the Kit are rated very well in allThingD. The versatility of the lens is somewhat diminished because it blocks the Flash and the front facing camera. The best images appeared to be from the wide angle lens in our tests.
	Photojojo 3 lens Kit for iPhone, Androids – $50 This 3 lens kit includes a fisheye, a wide-angle/macro and a zoom lens. This was the best of the zoom lenses on show but in store pictures showed vignetting and noise at the margins. The wide-angle and fish-eye were the best performers in the kit.

 

These are the best lenses appearing so far; but my photo dealer assures me that more are on the way. As smartphone sales number in the hundreds of millions each quarter this trend should not be a surprise.  SLR lens attachers are the current vogue but nothing appeared to handle the SLR-to-smartphone attachement process well. Since I am about to upgrade my smartphone, a final purchase was not in the cards. I had hoped to see more versatile attachments like the Photojojo that could accomodate both iPhone and Android smartphones; but the fragmentation of camera hardware on the Android side presents real problems so expect to see the camera attachments on iPhones first. And also expect more and better smartphone lenses and attachments in the coming months including better audio, flash, and control attachments.