I’ve never been one who’s been thrilled at the idea of taking pictures. Frankly, the very thought of just wandering around looking for things worth shooting bores me. But snapping quick pics is part of my life, be it for reviews such as this, my kids, or even at my job, AMD all three are accomplished using smartphones. As the idea of using them in lieu of conventional cameras continues to grow, I fully expect to see more picture-centric accessories to pop up on he market. One of those accessories is a macro lens from Apexel that is designed to work on most smartphones.
The idea for this lens is simple, and frankly a bit creative. It is designed in such a way that users can snap it into place, with it resting on top of the lens, with the unit itself being comprised of two pieces: the lens proper, and a simple piece of plastic that curves around to bracket the lens against the phone. Both pieces are black in color, and save for the glass lens itself, are comprised of entirely of plastic, amd they arrive inside of a foam casing, alomg with instructions and a cloth that appears to be microfiber, or something similar, for cleaning the lenses.
Using the lens was straightforward. I placed the lens into the clip, then opened the clip enough to fit it over the phone. That’s all there is to the set up. I opened up my camera app, and was off and running. Being a macro lens, it really only functions when the object I was shooting was less than an inch away, so it was somewhat tricky to use. Please understand though, that it wasn’t tricky to use the lens, so much as it was tricky taking decent photographs at such a close range, as I have little experience at it, and discovered some of the challenges inherent to shooting so close. For example, getting my phone within an inch of what I was shooting in such a way as to not have the phone block out the light, and wouldn’t otherwise be an issue if I were shooting something from a distance of say, six to twelve inches.
But on the photos I shot where I was able to finagle the lighting and other details, the lens did make an appreciable difference. I was able to zoom in on objects in such a way that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to when I’m holding my phone that close. For the images here, the clearer ones were snapped with the lenses, and the blurrier ones were snapped without, but at the same distance (or as close as I could keep it). I shot with the lenses, then snapped it off to shoot a second, while keeping the phone as still as possible.
What makes this difficult for me to score is that I’m no Ansel Adams. I can see a clear difference, when shooting both with and without the lens, at the same distance. What I don’t know is if the quality of what I shot is any good. So for the subjective portion, I leave that to you, dear reader. This lens does make a difference, for those wanting to shoot things at a very close range, and it attached quite easily. So with it working as promised, and doing my best to overlook the subjective quality to the pictures, I feel compelled to give it an eight. While I’m basically a point and shoot style photographer, in the hands of one with actual skill, I’d wager better pictures than mine could be shot.
http://www.topbrandbox.com/apexel-20x-hd-macro-lens-with-universal-clip-for-smartphones-black–p14.html
