During the Olympics, I got rather excited when I read an article of an Olympic press photographer who was using an iPhone 4S as his mainstay camera and shooting some great pictures. On closer inspection, he was using an external lens system by Schneider Optics, the product line being the iPro lens system.
Ever since putting down my Nikon DSLR a few years ago, I’ve been trying to find the most satisfactory solution which gives near picture quality to SLRs, but with the convenience of compacts. I bought and sold the Panasonic G1 in the last 2 years, largely unsatisfied with its speed of operation and sync for daylight and flash pictures. With these other types of non SLR camera, the trade offs to the performance and optics are obvious, but the gains are increasingly that in a world where our smartphone dominates our everyday experience, that it is increasingly the preferred device to take photos which will end up on our on-line galleries and social networks, which in turn are used for our end of year calendars, season greeting cards and increasingly, hold our visual data for productivity and collaboration applications.
Without going into a full-blown review, which I’m sure you can find elsewhere, the iPro lens system is made up as you can see below, with 3-lenses and a case for the iPhone 4 and 4S which utilises a bayonet mount for each lens. Each lens is of the fixed type and corresponds to 35 focal lengths accordingly for both stills and video:
The nice touch is that unused lenses, become part of a lens case and a handle which attaches to a screw attachment on the iPhone case, thereby making a sort of mini monopod as shown in the next picture:
Packaging wise, it came in 2-boxes. One for the iPhone case with the wide and fish eye lenses and handle, the other holding the telephoto lens. Setting it up took a few minutes, with care being applied to getting the iPro case onto my 4S. I should add the case fitting is very tight. Getting it off, was tricky and Schneider Optics should look at this as an area of improvement for their next version.
In terms of usability, beyond the novelty, it was nice. I found the wide and fish eye lens most fun. Don’t expect stellar quality as the lens a function of the optical capability of the iPhone 4 and 4 itself and their own glass working with it. But remember, my aim is not taking stunning detailed RAW images, but photos to add to my cloud service apps and social networks. To that end, it played nice. Another improvement I’d like to see is the bayonet fitting for each lens to the case to be less fiddly (as handling miniature and delicate lenses like this open up the accident factor if you’re in an odd place), but as a a solution for getting a better range of photos with my iPhone 4/4S and keeping it as small a possible, this is very good, not not great.
One point of note, is that the iPhone’s flash does not work with the iPro lens, thereby forcing daylight scenario photos and thereby opening up the limitations of the iPhone 4 and 4S low light capabilities to the newly crowned iPhone 5.
An iPhone 5 equivalent set of lenses and case is current under development at Schneider Optics and you can bet it will be available in a number of months, given this iPhone 5 model size should see us to a 5S in about a years time. Attending a friends wedding at the summer enabled me to get a real tour of duty for a day and experience for how practical the iPro lens were to use and assess the quality of the photos. I liked it, and it is quite a pull in wedding conversations with the “where did you get the cool tech from for your iPhone” sort of line.
If you want better range of fun factor with an iPhone 4 and 4S, the iPro lens is well worth a closer look.
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