olloclip Filmer’s Kit for iPhone REVIEW

5 min readApr 11, 2018

A few days ago, a friend of mine asked the Facebook universe about people’s experience with mobile phone lenses. She is about to take an overseas trip with her family and wanted to have the ability to take high-quality photos without the need to lug around her DSLR. A lot of people had suggestions, but I defaulted to olloclip lenses. Olloclip as a company started in 2011 when founder Patrick O’Neill launched a Kickstarter to fund the original 3-in-1 Photo Lens. The olloclip lens is a quick-connect lens system for the iPhone that features a fisheye, wide-angle and macro lenses. I’ve been fortunate enough to work closely with olloclip lenses in the past and I’m excited to see them grow and evolve alongside the iPhone. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using olloclip’s Filmer’s Kit, which takes the best olloclip lenses and packages them together into one, concise kit.

Details

olloclip takes care to use premium materials in building their lenses. The lenses are made with multi-element coated glass optics for high-quality images. The lens system (lens + clip) is designed to align instantly with no extra parts required. The systems will work on either the back or front-facing cameras so you can use them for selfies if desired. The clips are wearable so that they are always at the ready. The pendant can double as a stand for your phone. olloclip lenses are designed to work with all camera apps and are even compatible with video, time-lapse, panoramas, and 360-degree VR photos. The Pivot Grip is an accessory with a built-in universal clamp that accommodates mobile devices up to 5.5-inches. It does not require a power source and it will articulate up to 225 degrees.

The kit includes the following accessories:

Fisheye lens with 180-degree spherical effect
Super-wide lens with over 120-degree field-of-view
Macro Lens provides 15x magnification for extreme close-up work
Ultra-wide lens covers a 155-degree field-of-view
Telephoto provides 2x optical zoom for a shallow depth-of-view
Pivot Grip provides 225-degree articulation for filming at any angle. You can connect to your smartphone, GoPro, or compact camera and the grip features passive stabilization.

User Experience

The first thing I noticed with the Filmer’s Kit was the incredible carrying case that is provided. olloclip partnered with Incase to give users an easy way to carry their lenses and accessories around. There is no handle, but the die-cut foam padding certainly makes up for that omission. All the pieces of the kit are laid out in a way that makes sense. They are easy to remove from the case and because everything is cut to fit the accessories, they are easy to put away, too.

Using the olloclip lenses is a breeze. You simply remove the clip from its pendant and slide it over your phone’s camera lens. Your phone will have to be sans case, which bothers me a bit (I love having my phone in a case), while you are using the olloclip lenses. Once the olloclip lens is aligned with your iPhone’s lens, you can start taking photos. Part of the Filmer’s Kit is the Pivot Grip accessory. This is designed to provide you with a smooth way to handle your iPhone while you shoot video. I actually found it quite helpful for still photos, too. Since I am so used to having a case on my phone, I felt awkward holding it without one. Once I put it in the Pivot Grip, I felt much more secure as I was taking photos.

As stated above, olloclip included 5 lenses in this kit. This variety provides any iPhoneographer the opportunity to really enhance their photos with the simple addition of a specialized lens. olloclip is careful to outline that you need to ensure you are using the correct clip for your phone as they include both the iPhone 7/8 and 7/8 Plus clips in the kit. I did notice that a couple of the lenses didn’t quite fit tightly into the clip. They were locked into place, but sort of shook around a bit. This didn’t affect my photos but I was definitely aware of it as I took pictures around town.

Conclusions

They say that the best camera is the one you have with you and these days, your phone’s camera is nothing to shy away from. My iPhone 7 has a 12MP camera with a f/1.8 aperture. Mobile phone cameras have come a long way in the past 10 years and many people prefer to use their iPhone cameras instead of their simple point and shoot cameras. Now, you have the option to do more with your mobile phone’s camera with the olloclip Filmer’s Kit. With this complete accessory kit, you can deliver the ultimate smartphone photos. I can recommend the olloclip accessories and lenses as they are premium quality items and are very easy to use.

For more information, visit olloclip.com.
Find olloclip on Facebook and Twitter.

Originally published at macsources.com on April 11, 2018.