Awesome Stuff: Lenses For Your Phone

from the camera-advancement dept

Sat, Dec 14th 2013 9:00am — Mike Masnick

Remember back in the day when people thought that having a camera in your phone was a fad, and that no one would ever really use their camera as a phone because the quality sucked? You don't hear that much any more. In fact, it seems that so many people are using their phones as cameras that there's now a market specifically for special lenses for your smartphone. This week's awesome stuff post looks at three crowdfunding projects for smartphone lenses.

First up we've got an Anamorphic Adapter Lens for the iPhone. This is mainly designed for amateur or independent filmmakers, looking to create a look and feel that's more "filmlike" with a widescreen shot. The sample videos included in the pitch video below are pretty impressive. We've talked about people filming movies with their smartphones in the past, and a device like this makes it possible to make such a film seem even more professional. It appears that plenty of people think it's pretty cool. The project has about a week to go and is nearly double its original $30,000 goal.
Next up, we've got the [BRIC+] zoom lens. It's actually much more than just a zoom lens. It also is a protective phone case and an extended battery for the phone. The zoom lens can then snap on magnetically to the case. The lens is a 3.5X optical lens, which isn't huge, but will always give you a higher quality zoom than the purely digital zooms found on most cameras today -- and of course, you can combine the optical zoom with the phone's zoom to go even further. The project just launched a few days ago, so still has a ways to go to hit its $65,000 goal. However, it still has well over a month, so it has a decent chance of getting there.
Finally, we've got the iZZi Slim, an iPhone case that includes a series of rotating lenses, so you can quickly switch which lens you use on the fly. The iZZi includes a fisheye lens, a 2x telephoto lens, a wideangle lens and a macro lens for closeups (which is built into the wideangle lens -- you just snap off a piece to get to it). To be honest, the quality on these lenses don't look to be that great, but they still let you do more than the basic lens alone. With a few days left, this project has already surpassed its $25,000 goal by a little bit, so it appears that plenty of people are interested in having a collection of lenses like these.

That's it for this week. Go take some pictures.

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Filed Under: awesome stuff, cameras, lenses, smartphones

16 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 14 Dec 2013 @ 11:12am

Those are pretty cool. Might have to get one.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Dec 2013 @ 11:38am

microscopy with water droplets
A Waterdrop Microscope
http://micro.sci-toys.com/waterdrop
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/compound-eye/2012/0 3/12/transform-your-iphone-into-a-microscope-just-add-water/

About lenses, good quality lenses are ok, still there are other factors that can greatly improve even the not so good lense, like software correction for distortions and chromatic aberrations, but don't take my word for it.

http://www.tutorial9.net/tutorials/photography-tutorials/correcting-and-preventing-chromatic-aber ration/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion_(optics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphosis
ht tp://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/lens-corrections.htm

Bottom line, those lenses there are awesome, even if they are not "great" they can become great with software.

Now if your image sensor is bad, that could be a problem though.

Please someone slap me, I was just going to post about the water microscopy possibilities of cellphones and found a lot of other stuff.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Dec 2013 @ 1:36pm

[BRIC+] zoom lens
"It's actually much more than just a zoom lens."

Actually, carefully reading the Kickstarter page, it looks like it isn't even a zoom lens at all, but rather a telephoto lens.

Marketing. Humph.
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- Anonymous Coward, 14 Dec 2013 @ 2:47pm
  
  Re: [BRIC+] zoom lens
  ???
  
  Correct me if I am wrong but aren't telephoto lenses zoom lenses on steroids?
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephoto_lens
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_lens
  https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-focus_lens
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- nasch (profile), 15 Dec 2013 @ 7:35pm
  
  Re: [BRIC+] zoom lens
  Actually, carefully reading the Kickstarter page, it looks like it isn't even a zoom lens at all, but rather a telephoto lens.
  
  I'm guessing most people don't know the difference between the two.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Dec 2013 @ 5:06pm

Great. A few more expensive toys for the kids to play with...
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2013 @ 7:29am

Stocking stuffers!
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Ninja (profile), 16 Dec 2013 @ 1:28am

Iphone only. Annoying.
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- JBDragon, 16 Dec 2013 @ 7:36am
  
  Re:
  What do you expect? Do you expect them to make 10+ different Android versions that will also only work on that years phone because next year they'll change the design just for the hell of it???
  
  Maybe because the iPhone is nice and FLAT which making adding things like this much simpler, work better then a rounded back phone or a phone where the camera is sticking out the back!!!
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  - Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 11:53am
    
    Re: Re:
    I expect an X,Y movable lense system that can adapt to any camera placement on the back of any phone plus adjustable clamps that will hold it in place for any size(tablet or phone)
    
    Is that too much to ask, is not like is difficult, you can do it with rubber band, vice clamps or whatever else there is in the mechanical engineering tool set of options.
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  - David, 16 Dec 2013 @ 12:59pm
    
    re: iPhone only
    There is a great Kickstarter project that reached funding that is for all phones, and uses Binoculars as lenses. It is called SnapZoom. They just started production, and i am sure will be available soon.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 23 Dec 2013 @ 4:55pm
      
      Re: re: iPhone only
      A binocular camera adapter? Wow! What didn't someone think of that before?
      
      /s
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 6:22am

My wife's old 3G iphone had a case with a little "macro lense" that slide in place over the camera. While the idea isn't new, these are taking phone lenses to the next level. Great ideas... but I'm also annoyed that they're iphone only. Too bad more manufacturer's don't standardize the placement of the camera, but then you'd also have to deal with phone dimensions.
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Jake, 16 Dec 2013 @ 8:49am

I'm skeptical of this as a concept. If you're serious about film or photography but you're starting from scratch and only have a few hundred bucks for your equipment budget, what are you going to buy? An iPhone and one or more of these accessories or a professional-grade digital camera and a cheap-and-cheerful Android tablet?
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- nasch (profile), 16 Dec 2013 @ 9:43am
  
  Re:
  If you're serious about film or photography
  
  I don't think that's the target market. I think this is for people who don't want to carry around a camera, but want a little more capability than the phone has.
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Imtiaz Ali, 4 Mar 2014 @ 5:50am

Great Lenses for phone...
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