Okay Geek Farm
Photojojo fisheye, macro/wide angle, and telephoto phone lenses review
Jason Tsay
They say the best camera is the one you have with you. Often times, you want to take an awesome professional looking shot but don’t have your DSLR with you and your smartphone only takes average looking shots. Photojojo anticipated this and designed three lenses for use with just about any smartphone camera out there. Today, we’ll be taking a look at their fisheye, macro/wide angle, and 2x telephoto lenses.
Features
- Lens attaches to phone via magnetic ring
- Compatible with any camera phone
- Powerful macro lens focuses between 10-23mm from your subject
- Telephoto lens doubles your camera’s zoom (subjects are 2x closer)
- Wide angle lens 0.68x wide
- Fish-eye lens 180 degree angle (0.28x)
- Lenses range between 15.8mm-25mm diameter x 6.5mm-15mm length
Our Impressions
Each lens comes in a blister pack with the lens, two magnetic rings, and a little magnetic lanyard (you can attach it to your phone, necklace, etc…). Our package happened to include “Rawwwwwwr!” which turned out to be a little plastic dinosaur. We assume this novelty is intended for testing of the macro lens. For this review, we received the 180 degree fisheye, macro/0.68x wide angle, and 2x telephoto lenses. To use the macro lens, all you have to do is unscrew the top 0.68x wide angle part of the lens. Each cone shaped lens is solidly built of metal and is small enough to fit in your hand.
Setup was simple - we took one the magnetic rings and peeled off its paper backing. The adhesive underneath allowed us to easily attach it to our smartphone (all testing was done on a T-Mobile G2). The metal ring works best with phones that have a nice flat surface and nothing around the camera (the iPhone 4 would work pretty well despite the flash). If you’ve got a case on your phone, the lenses should still work, but there might be some light leakage and the lens might not stick as well.
The G2 happens to have a raised metal border around the camera so our ring didn’t stick too well. This is one instance where we think “one size fits all” doesn’t work too well at all. It would have been a much better fit if Photojojo made a couple of different styles of magnet (or better yet, unique magnets for different phones) and kept the lenses universal. We’re not sure if it was just because our magnet didn’t adhere properly but when we tried to swap lenses, the magnet came off with the lens (the magnet seems stronger than the sticker.
Rather than trying to describe the picture quality, we’re just going to have you take a look at the samples we’ve prepared from our testing. The telephoto lens enlarges items by a magnitude of two without the decrease in quality associated with digital zoom while the wide angle and fisheye lenses allow you to capture more of the scene in one shot. The macro lens is super useful for closeups (as you can see in sample of the Windows key).
(Wide angle sample)
(Macro sample)
(Telephoto sample)
(Fisheye sample)
Overall
At $20-$25 a pop, do we recommend Photojojo’s cellphone lenses? It really depends on how good the camera in your smartphone is but yes these lenses are definitely worth a look. Whether you’re trying to capture a scene with the super wide angle fisheye or trying to get some closeups with the macro lens, you’re covered with these tiny little adapter lenses. That said, many phones these days already have macro capabilities and there are some apps out there that can give you a fisheye style image. Our ultimate recommendation is to make sure that the magnetic ring will fit well on your phone before hitting “purchase.”
Pro’s
- well designed
- tiny
Con’s
- “one size fit all” magnets are not great
Where to buy
Photojojo — MSRP: $20 (telephoto), $20 (wide/macro), $25 (fisheye), $49 (all three)
This review was done by Jason Tsay, who was provided the cellphone lenses by Photojojo.
