IMAGE: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
The iPhone has one of the best smartphone cameras out there. The only thing holding it back? Its fixed lens.
Committed iPhone photographers have long recommended adding an external lens. Olloclip, so far, makes the most popular models that actually offer decent quality.
They cost anywhere from $70 to $120 for the iPhone 6, 6S, 6 Plus and 6S Plus. There are also a bunch of cheap external lenses out there that you can buy anywhere from $1 to $50.
The German company Zeiss — revered by photographers for its high-quality interchangeable lenses for traditional cameras — already sells a 165-degree lens for the iPhone.
Now it's taking another step forward with the ExoLens, available for the iPhone 6, 6S, 6 Plus and 6S Plus. At $199 for the wide-angle bundle, it's certainly pricey, but good lenses are never cheap.
IMAGE: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
IMAGE: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
The quality of a lens (as a phone attachment or for a "real" camera) is determined by the design of its glass elements.
A good lens should not only give you sharp photos, but combat nasty problems like distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration.
The old saying "you get what you pay for" definitely applies to Zeiss's new ExoLens system. Olloclip can't hold a candle to it.
I've been using the new Zeiss lenses — wide-angle, telephoto and macro — all over New York City for the last few weeks and it astounds me how much I can get out of the 8-megapixel camera on my old iPhone 6.
IMAGE: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
The iPhone lenses themselves look like miniature versions of Zeiss's classic camera lenses. They're impossibly adorable and even come with their own little lens hoods and caps. Be careful, though; the rubber caps that cover the lens mounts are so small that I almost lost them several times. (It's probably a good idea to use the included drawstring bags.)
The Olloclip lens has the advantage of being smaller and easier to clip to your phone. Other lenses — especially the cheaper ones, but even the the $100 Moment lenses — rely on adhesives, magnets, weird rubber bands and clips to attach to your iPhone.
IMAGE: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
IMAGE: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
Zeiss's new lenses screw onto a sturdy metal frame that easily slip on and off your phone. It includes a 1/4-inch tripod mount socket and a slot on the top for attaching other accessories, such as an external flash, which I didn't get to try.
The frame is brilliant if you're into letting your iPhone go nude (aka case-less) like me, but will be a big nuisance if you use a case, because you'll need to remove it before slipping on the Zeiss.
From a quality standpoint, Zeiss's new lenses are the best I've ever used for an iPhone. They're well-built and the image quality is leaps and bounds better than any other lens I have tried, especially for the wide-angle and telephoto lenses.
Even though it doesn't let you get as close as Olloclip's 21x macro lens, it still provides crisp, clear close-ups.
I've included a whole bunch of comparisons below showing what you can get with the iPhone's standard camera lens versus the Zeiss and Olloclip lenses.
Seeing more
With Zeiss's wide-angle lens, you can squeeze significantly more into a photo. Take a look at this beautiful view of the Empire State Building I took on our office rooftop. A wide-angle lens exaggerates a perspective to make it more epic. It's great for landscape photography or for making rooms look larger than they really are (real estate agents know all about using a wide-angle lens to make a tiny room appear bigger in listings).
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
Just look at how much more you can see in this tiny little studio.
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
The difference between the quality of the Zeiss lens and the Olloclip is easily noticeable in the comparison above. See how the Zeiss has less distortion and the Olloclip starts to warp around the edges? In the latter example, the building under construction starts to curve toward the center.
At full-resolution, you can also see the Zeiss is sharper across the entire photo and the Olloclip is blurrier and suffers from color fringing around the outlines (which is called chromatic aberration).
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
I also compared the Zeiss wide-angle lens with the $99 Moment 18mm wide-angle lens. The Zeiss also comes out on top. There's some vignetting in the corners of photos shot with the Moment lens, along with distortion and chromatic aberration.
Zooming in
The digital zoom on your iPhone is garbage — it always makes your image grainier and more blurry. It's awful. Always, always move your body closer to the shot (if possible) for a better close-up photo.
With a telephoto lens, you can zoom in and still retain details because the lens is optically magnifying the iPhone's lens.
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
It's no contest. The Zeiss lens produces a better image.
Focusing in
While I wished Zeiss made a 21x macro lens like Olloclip, I wasn't entirely disappointed by what I saw.
The details on this (likely dead) lady bug are still crisp enough to embarrass the iPhone's stock camera. I had more trouble focusing with the Zeiss macro lens — often, the center of a subject would come out blurry, even with the translucent lens hood — than I did with the Olloclip.
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
IMAGE: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE
It's all in the lenses
IMAGE: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE
I always crack up whenever I see people hooking up huge DSLR lenses to their iPhones — then they have the audacity to say "shot on iPhone." Of course you're going to get better image quality with a huge honking camera lens.
This is a nice compromise. I haven't tried every single iPhone lens out there, but I feel confident that Zeiss's ExoLens lens system is the best one out there. The three lenses I tested all have the qualities that made Zeiss glass coveted before the invention of the smartphone.
The wide-angle lens kit I tried is expensive (and currently sold exclusively on Apple.com). And Zeiss hasn't announced pricing for the telephoto or macro kits (prediction: they won't be cheap). But if you want the best lenses for your iPhone, you probably won't find anything better.
Zeiss ExoLens Wide-angle Lens System
The Good
Unbeatable image quality (for mini-lenses) • Premium glass optics • Lenses come with lens hoods and caps • Easy installation and removal
The Bad
Expensive • Rubber caps to cover lens mounts are easily lost
The Bottom Line
Zeiss's high-quality ExoLens wide-angle, telephoto and macro lenses for iPhone are an excellent way to level-up your photos.
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