Consumer Reports: Smartphone Camera Lenses

Published 06/10 2016 06:04PM

Updated 06/10 2016 06:04PM

If you have a smartphone, no doubt, you've taken a few pictures with it and been impressed with the quality. If you'd like to improve on your efforts Barry Levy joins us and says there are some inexpensive specialty lenses that go right on your phone, which you can get just in time for summer vacation.

(Barry levy, Reporting)The quality of the photos you can take with your smartphone is amazing and you don't need a huge lens like this to do even better. Consumer Reports tried out some of the latest smartphone camera lenses to hit the market and here's what they found. You're going to want to get one of these.

The new smartphone lenses run the gamut, from macro lens to fish-eye and soft-focus to telephoto - a lens that brings faraway subjects closer to the camera. There are also wide-angle lenses so you can include more of the scene in your frame.

Terry Sullivan, Consumer Reports Camera Editor"What's exciting about these lenses is they let you expand the capabilities on your smartphone and let you get creative at a reasonable price."

Of the four brands consumer reports tried out, Photojojo's are the least expensive. Each of its lenses goes for $20 dollars.Lensbaby makes a soft-focus lens for $60 dollars. Olloclip offers two lenses; wide-angle and telephoto, in a kit for $100 dollars.And the Mobi lens has a nice wide-angle lens of its own for $30 dollars. That's a far cry from traditional lenses, which can set you back hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

Terry Sullivan, Consumer Reports Camera Editor"There are a couple of drawbacks in using these lenses. For starters, they cover up the phone's flash."

You can work around losing the smartphone's flash by adding a flash like the Xuma Mobile LED.  It costs $35 dollars and has two different brightness settings as well as a slow strobe. Still, don't expect perfect results from these lenses. You won't get professional features like high clarity on the edges of the fish-eye lens photos or image stabilization, which compensates for your hand's slight movements.

The lenses Consumer Reports tried out will fit most iPhones, but not as many fit Android phones. So before you buy any lenses, make  sure they're compatible with the phone you have and keep in mind you'll have to remove the phone's case to use these little guys.

If you'd like to instantly print photos from your phone, fuji makes a small portable printer for about $150 dollars

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Source: Consumer Reports: Smartphone Camera Lenses