Review: Olloclip 3-in-One Lens for iPhone 4/4S

The Olloclip combines three lenses on a compact mount that simply slips over the corner of your iPhone to position an accessory lens in front of the native lens. It’s small and lightweight enough to carry in a shirt pocket, putting it on your phone and switching from lens to lens takes only a second or two and it fits securely so that you can turn the phone to any angle without worrying about the Olloclip falling off. 

The three lenses provided in the Olloclip are a fisheye, a wide-angle lens and a macro lens that gives you approximately 1:3.7 magnification. You simply flip the Olloclip around to switch between the wide-angle and fisheye lenses, which are positioned on opposite sides. To use the macro lens, you unscrew the wide-angle lens that’s over it -- the most complicated procedure the Olloclip ever requires.

The Olloclip design isn’t flawless. Because it’s designed to fit snugly on the iPhone 4/4S, you can’t put it on the phone when it’s in a case. (A version for the iPhone 5 is due later this year.) And one minor inconvenience in daily use is the difficulty of cleaning the rear elements of the lenses. They’re exposed and prone to collecting dust and lint when the Olloclip isn’t on your phone, but unless you have the fingers of an elf, you can’t easily reach them inside the permanently attached mount to clean them.

The front elements are covered with little plastic caps, and the Olloclip comes in a bag that helpfully doubles as a lens cloth, but you’ll need a small brush or cleaning swab to rid debris from the rear elements regularly. The Olloclip also covers the iPhone’s built-in flash, but given the quality of a typical iPhone flash photo, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

LENS.

iPhone Macro Lens:

Designed for extreme close-ups when you’re photographing small objects at close distances, the olloclip macro lens magnifies your image roughly 10 times. It allows you to focus your iPhone within 12 to 15 mm of what you’re photographing, so you can fill the frame with your subject and capture it in amazing detail. This makes it ideal for capturing the smallest nuances in flowers, leaves, colorful insects and anything else that you want to explore and share in a way not possible with the human eye. Once you start experimenting, you’ll find that every subject has interesting detail that can make for fascinating close-up photos.

iPhone Fisheye Lens:

With its hemispherical shape, similar to the eye of a fish, the olloclip fisheye lens captures a wide, panoramic view — an approximately 180-degree field of view. This ultra wide lens is designed for shooting very wide angles and is especially useful for photographing extremely wide panoramas of landscapes and the sky, and for close-up subjects in crowds, interiors, and architectural settings.

The fisheye lens is also commonly used to photograph extreme sports like skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing. Due to the strong visual distortion it creates, it is increasingly used in abstract and artistic photography — to create unique visual effects in everything from still lifes to portraits. It’s fun to experiment, and you’ll be amazed at the results you can achieve.

iPhone Wide Angle Lens:

The olloclip wide-angle lens is designed for those occasions when you need that extra field of view, approximately double that of the normal iPhone. It allows more of the scene to be included in the photograph, which is useful when you’re taking pictures of architecture, interiors and landscapes—particularly in settings where you can’t move farther from the scene to photograph it.

Photographers use a wide-angle lens to emphasize the difference in size or distance between objects in the foreground and the background. Nearby objects will appear very large and objects at a moderate distance will appear small and far away. This exaggeration of relative size can be used to make foreground objects more prominent and striking, while capturing expansive backgrounds.

The wide-angle lens is much larger than the iPhone lens so it is able to capture much more light and will capture some incredible sunrise and sunset pictures.

If you’re looking for a versatile iPhone 4/4S lens system that’s convenient to carry and use, you won’t find a better-designed device than the Olloclip. But design is one thing - while It excells when it comes to design, versatility and convenience, The Olloclip falls down when it comes to critical image optical quality.

Pros: Simple installation; Lightweight; Good quality

Cons: Doesn't fit over iPhone cases; Price

Visit olloclip.com for more info.