iPhone 5S - Olloclip?!

[TorqueR]

Good evening,

I am a keen photographer who is interested in a clip-on lenses for the iPhone. Upon browsing eBay, a certain type of lense caught my attention - it's called the "Olloclip 3-1 Camera" and I was hoping that some of you may have it, have trialed it or used it. If you have any experience with it, would you rate or slate it?!

Thank you.

[williaa68]

I bought one for my brother as he travels a lot with work and tweets a lot too. He loves it! I bought mine off amazon. I think it was about £60.

[AndWhyNot]

I had one for my iPhone 4S w/ macro, wide angle & fisheye.

For stills, the only lens of the three which I used with any sort of regularity was the macro. The wide angle & fisheye didn't provide a high-enough quality of image for me, particularly I felt they suffered from softness & aberrations. Maybe I had a bad set, maybe my expectations were too high. Either way, my impression was that they took more away from the images than they offered. For video, though, it's easier to gloss over their shortcomings so I guess they have a little more potential.

The macro was a little soft around the edges of the image, especially in the corners, but with the depth of field being so narrow that softness is readily concealed. This lens alone gave me a sense of value from the set and gives you the chance to have a lot of fun with its magnification. I think the olloclip for 5S has more than one version of the macro so it's worth thinking which option is going to be most useful to you. There's also the zoom w/ polariser which looks neat but I can't comment first hand as the use I got from my original olloclip made me not bother when I upgraded handsets earlier this year.

Final thing is about storage- they come in a cloth bag but pick up all sorts of pocket lint. If you do get one, it's got to be worth finding a separate, clean case to keep the lens stored out the reach of dust and other unsightly artefacts.

[TorqueR]

Thank you for your replies. It has given me a few points to think about. I have seen them for £35.00 on various websites and it was mainly this video which made me consider them;

http://youtu.be/ZpCK_KR8qJ4

Is that a good representation of the quality that I would find?!

[leglessAlex]

I got some off Ebay for about £5, and they do the job just fine. The fish eye is a bit of fun, the wide angle isn't much use and the macro is actually pretty good. No way in hell would I spend £35 on them though. It just strikes me as a bit of a gimmick really.

[Fluid]

leglessAlex said:

I got some off Ebay for about £5, and they do the job just fine. The fish eye is a bit of fun, the wide angle isn't much use and the macro is actually pretty good. No way in hell would I spend £35 on them though. It just strikes me as a bit of a gimmick really.

Was that a Olloclip, or another make?

[leglessAlex]

Fluid said:

leglessAlex said:

I got some off Ebay for about £5, and they do the job just fine. The fish eye is a bit of fun, the wide angle isn't much use and the macro is actually pretty good. No way in hell would I spend £35 on them though. It just strikes me as a bit of a gimmick really.

Was that a Olloclip, or another make?

Apologies, I should have clarified that the lenses I got were a cheap Chinese copy. No doubt the quality of the Olloclip ones is vastly superior but seeing as I think these a a bit of a gimmick/bit of fun having lower quality doesn't bother me.