You Don’t Need a Camera: 10 Phone Lenses for Professional Photos | Articles | Photo, video, optics

In many areas of our lives, rigid bound­aries have begun to soft­en, includ­ing in the field of pho­tog­ra­phy: now, in order to take a great pic­ture and gain the respect of the pub­lic, it is not nec­es­sary to spend huge mon­ey on a cam­era and equip­ment.

Even on Insta­gram, one of the most pop­u­lar styles for the design of the feed is the trend for nat­u­ral­ness, move­ment and live­li­ness in the frame, and not clear and sharp pho­tos from pro­fes­sion­al pho­to shoots.

There­fore, shoot­ing on the phone has long ceased to be some­thing shame­ful. In addi­tion, a huge advan­tage of a smart­phone is its com­pact­ness: it is rel­a­tive­ly small, light and always close to you.

Per­son­al­ly, on the con­trary, I like shoot­ing on an iPhone more: cap­tur­ing the moment and tak­ing a live pho­to is much eas­i­er if you do it real­ly by chance, and not pur­pose­ful­ly assem­ble a truck with equip­ment.

But since we are talk­ing about Insta­gram, we need to remem­ber the fol­low­ing, the biggest pain of all blog­gers and ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phers — the social net­work mer­ci­less­ly devours the qual­i­ty of images. And here, no mat­ter how much they love mobile shoot­ing, the desire to main­tain sharp­ness makes you think.

For­tu­nate­ly, every­thing was invent­ed for us a long time ago — lens­es for phones, they will help pro­tect pix­els from the vora­cious Insta­gram.

Let’s take a look at some of the best.

What is a phone lens?

It’s sim­ple: it’s a tiny lens that you attach to your phone’s cam­era. It mag­ni­fies what your iPhone or Android sees and actu­al­ly works like a nor­mal cam­era lens.

It is impor­tant to note that phone lens­es, like cam­era lens­es, not only allow you to zoom in with­out los­ing qual­i­ty, but also help you work in dif­fer­ent areas of pho­tog­ra­phy: for exam­ple, a wide-angle phone lens is use­ful in land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, a macro lens is under­stand­able for what, and the fish­eye is for styl­iz­ing frames.

1. Telephoto lens Moment, 58mm

The main dif­fer­ence between this lens and the phone’s cam­era is the wide aper­ture (f/1.8) that allows you to get blur­ry back­grounds.

The opti­cal design has been improved, includ­ing six glass ele­ments and four lens groups, so images are clear with­out unwant­ed vignette.

Source: Ama­zon

An option­al mul­ti-lay­er lens coat­ing com­bats flare and reflec­tions. Chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tion, i.e. col­ored blur­ry edges around the sub­ject in the frame, is also kept to a min­i­mum, giv­ing you the best qual­i­ty images.

The price is quite high — 7 thou­sand rubles and more. But if you’re seri­ous about mobile pho­tog­ra­phy, this is a great invest­ment.

2. Xenvo Pro lens kit

This is a set that con­sists of a wide angle lens and a macro lens, a lens clip, a minia­ture recharge­able LED lamp and some oth­er use­ful lit­tle things.

The wide-angle lens is great for land­scape and street pho­tog­ra­phy with min­i­mal dis­tor­tion, while the macro lens pro­vides a 15x zoom, use­ful for close-up shots.

Source: Ama­zon

Lens­es pro­vide clar­i­ty and accu­rate col­or repro­duc­tion. The light­ing from the lamp is soft and even, in three dif­fer­ent modes.

This kit is good val­ue for mon­ey.

3. Apexel HD 20–40X zoom lens

This lens allows you to zoom in up to 40x. It is quite large due to the extend­ed zoom range, so it comes with a tri­pod.

This high mag­ni­fi­ca­tion lens is ide­al for sports, wildlife and trav­el pho­tog­ra­phy.

Source: Ama­zon

The lens is not small, but there is a spe­cial bag for it. In addi­tion, it is com­pat­i­ble with almost all smart­phones.

4. Sony DSC-QX10 QX10 Lens

This lens has a 10x opti­cal zoom of 25–250mm, so it can be used in a vari­ety of pho­tog­ra­phy direc­tions. The lens shoots with a res­o­lu­tion of 18 megapix­els, rec­og­nizes objects in low light.

The cam­era has built-in sta­bi­liza­tion (!), allow­ing you to take clear pho­tos even at the most extend­ed zoom range.

Source: Ama­zon

The lens allows you to shoot Full HD 30p video, which sur­pass­es many of the basic capa­bil­i­ties of smart­phones. All this makes the lens ide­al for video shoot­ing as well as for pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phy.

5. Ztylus Designer Revolver M Series Camera Kit

The Zty­lus Revolver has one of the most inno­v­a­tive designs when it comes to smart­phone lens kits.

The lens looks like a small wash­er that needs to be attached to the phone.

Source: Ama­zon

In addi­tion to a 2x tele­pho­to lens, it also sup­ports wide-angle and super macro modes. So its advan­tage is com­pact­ness com­bined with func­tion­al­i­ty.

6. Olloclip Essential Telephoto Zoom 2X Lens

The 2x opti­cal zoom of this lens allows you to get clos­er to the sub­ject while main­tain­ing HD qual­i­ty. There­fore, Ollo­clip Essen­tial is suit­able for por­traits, street pho­tog­ra­phy and oth­er events.

This lens can also be pur­chased in a kit that includes a 2x tele­pho­to lens, a macro lens, a fish­eye lens, and a wide-angle lens.

Source: Ama­zon

The lens is attached to the phone using a clip. The clip is adjustable so you can use the lens with any case and screen pro­tec­tor.

In addi­tion, the set includes a lens cap to pro­tect the lens from dam­age and a Blue­tooth wire­less remote con­trol that allows you to take pho­tos at a dis­tance of up to 9.1 m.

7. Nelomo Professional HD Camera Lens Universal Kit

This kit includes three lens­es that can be attached to your smart­phone cam­era.

0.65x wide-angle lens — for group shots, street pho­tog­ra­phy or land­scapes. Mean­while, a 230-degree lens gives a sharp opti­cal dis­tor­tion.

But the high­light of this set is the 15x macro lens, which allows you to cap­ture sub­jects that are only a few cen­time­ters away from the cam­era.

Source: Ama­zon

Since the kit includes lens­es of var­i­ous focal lengths, it will help you cap­ture the moment in any sit­u­a­tion.

8. CoPedvic lens kit

This kit includes a 22x tele­pho­to lens, a 205-degree fish­eye lens, an ultra wide angle lens, and a 25x macro lens.

This com­bi­na­tion of focal lengths is a super-use­ful tool for try­ing out dif­fer­ent styles of pho­tog­ra­phy. A tele­pho­to lens pro­vides a fixed focal length, while a macro lens allows you to focus close.

Source: Ama­zon

An addi­tion­al coat­ing is applied to the sur­face of the lens­es, which makes the glass resis­tant to dirt and scratch­es.

9. Lens Kit by Coral Entertainments

This kit includes macro and wide-angle lens­es, a remote con­trol and a mul­ti­func­tion­al phone tri­pod, as well as an Advance CPL polar­iz­ing fil­ter that fights dis­tor­tion.

The wide-angle lens pro­vides a mag­ni­fi­ca­tion of 0.45x, and the macro lens allows you to take pho­tos with 15x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion.

Source: Ama­zon

Man­u­fac­tur­ers promise high image qual­i­ty for both pho­tos and videos.

Lens­es are com­pat­i­ble with almost all phone mod­els. The cost is low, so this is an ide­al option for a lim­it­ed bud­get.

10. Apexel 2x telephoto lens

This lens is great for por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy.

It only has a 2x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, but that’s good enough for close-up por­trait pho­tos and blur­ry back­grounds. Also, the lens pro­vides 4K res­o­lu­tion, and this, in turn, is a high image qual­i­ty.

Apex­el pre­vents dis­tor­tion, ensur­ing max­i­mum accu­ra­cy when tak­ing pho­tos.

Source: Ama­zon

The lens has a min­i­mal­is­tic design, and can be installed on any smart­phone: the size of the clip is adjustable accord­ing to the size of your phone.

The lens has mul­ti­lay­er lens­es with a spe­cial coat­ing — it pre­vents glare and reflec­tions. You can also use fil­ters for a clear­er image.

In short…

If you’re look­ing to take qual­i­ty pho­tos with­out the expense of an expen­sive cam­era, check out some smart­phone lens­es.

The choice as always depends on your require­ments and, of course, the bud­get.