Hey DGC! Your buddy Soup here, hoping to help you take some better pics!
I got a lot of great Christmas gifts this year, but one of my favorites has been this Aukey Smart Phone Lens Kit ($25 on Amazon)
I often find myself trying to take super close up pictures of my flowers or plants or other fun things I find in nature, but my camera just won’t focus on things that small or that close to the lens. I’ve wanted a nice camera with a macro lens for a long time now, but there hasn’t been any room in the budget for buying fancy cameras and lenses.
A friend who knows about cameras told me I should check out some of the clip on lens kits for my iphone. All of the smartphone lenses I had seen seemed kinda crappy and I was pretty skeptical that they would actually be any good.
I must say though, I have been pleasantly surprised.
This kit is not only well made, it works pretty good too!
The kit comes with a macro lens, a wide angle lens, lens caps, a special clip for attaching the lenses to your phone, and even a nifty storage bag and cleaning cloth. The box it comes in also has nice foam padding and works well as a storage case.
The lenses themselves are made of metal and glass and have a nice solid feel to them. The mounting clip is made from strong plastic and does a great job holding the lenses in place while in use. The clip is threaded on one side and the lenses attach to it nicely.
Mounting clip
Macro Lens clipped to my old iPhone 4
Macro Lens
The macro lens allows you to get much closer to the subject of your photos, and allows you to focus on things much smaller than your camera would normally be able to focus on. This makes it great for taking close up bud shots or other situations where you are trying to zoom way in and focus in on little tiny details.
Macro Lens and clip
Taken with iPhone 6 with clip on macro. You can see a round male pre-flower starting to form.
Here you can see a macro shot of a female pre-flower, which can be identified by the two little hairs sticking out of it. The red stuff is dried plant sap from where she was recently topped.
Heres a macro shot of some Gorilla Glue. Notice how the background blurs. The macro lens allows you to focus much closer than usual, but will blur anything in the backdrop.
Wide Angle Lens
The wide angle lens attaches to the macro lens and allows you to get a wider view and fit more into the shot than you would normally be able to. This makes it great for taking wide shots of the whole canopy (or even the whole grow room) or any other time you want to capture a wider field of view.
Without the wide angle lens. My 4×8 veg area does not all fit in the picture.
With the wide angle lens. The whole 4×8 veg area fits in the shot. Spectrum King Mothers Littler Helpers are crushing it. Thats a male and some herbs, marigolds and other companion plants on the left side. Go Time and Jazz from TGA seeds on the right
Overall I am really impressed with this kit and its currently selling for only $25! I still hope to get a fancy camera + macro setup someday, but this little kit opens up a lot of options and allows me to take all kinds of fun pictures that were not possible with just my standard iPhone camera.
Thanks for reading and for more fun pics from my garden, find me on Instagram! @SoupTheGardener