Latest must-have: a clip-on smartphone lens

Of all the recent gadgets I’ve bought, my new favourite is my clip-on smartphone lens.

I bought this Youvue lens at, ahem, Topshop at the holidays in the impulse purchase section by the registers. It cost around £15 and allows me to take either macro images or wide-angle. As a result it’s vastly expanded how and when I can rely on my iPhone for pictures rather than using my “big” camera.

Of course, I have better lenses for my Canon 5D, but I rarely feel like lugging that around for day-to-day images. A great thing about my little lens is that you can clip it on to any smartphone — it’s simple optics and doesn’t require “installation” or software.

Here’s a brief demo of what the lens can do:

This is a picture I took last week with my iPhone without the clip-on lens, of a family room at the Royal Horseguards Hotel in London. (Ignore that thumb shadow over the lower left corner, for demonstration purposes.)

Here’s the same view using the wide-angle lens:

As you can see, there’s a bit of distortion around the edges but the range it gives makes such a difference for photographing landscape images and — as in this case — rooms or other subjects you want to show more of.

Then to use the macro feature of the lens, you unscrew the small wide-angle section and you have a macro lens. It lets you get close. Really close. In truth I have few opportunities to use this. Often when you get really close to things you see just how dusty, dirty or imperfect they are. But it’s great fun for experimenting and you can occasionally create arresting and unusual images.

Here’s a regular iPhone picture of a platter of goodies for the children’s tea, also taken at the Royal Horseguards Hotel. There are lemon macarons, chocolate and strawberry “lollipops”. This first picture gives you an idea of their real size.

Lemon macarons and strawberry “lollipops”

A macro shot of one of the lollipops, focusing on the freeze dried strawberry decoration on top

You can get higher quality fancier versions of smartphone lenses. Some you can use on several brands. Some are only for iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.

At an Instagram event I tried out the Olloclip, a fancier, sturdier clip-lens that also includes a fish-eye version. You can buy Olloclip for iPhone only right now. Here’s an example of the fish-eye lens and its wonderfully artificial distortion in action:

A Twitter friend loves his separate Vtec fish eye and wide angle/macro lenses (about £18.00 each). These you order different versions for iPhone and Samsung Galaxy.

Of course, there are some impressively proportioned specialist smartphone lenses that extend up and out of the phones priapically and indicate you’re taking the whole thing way too seriously.

I suggest find one that fits your budget and phone and give it a try.

About Jennifer Howze

Jennifer Howze is the Creative Director and co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about family travel at Jenography.net, tweets at @JHowze and Instagrams at @JHowze. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.

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