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Olloclip three-in-one lens accessory for iPhone

Olloclip three-in-one lens

Optical expaaaaaaansion for the iPhone

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Geek Treat of the Week So Apple’s surprise non-announcement last week still made your original iPhone 4 feel a bit less special? Well, before you ditch and switch, maybe this is the alternative: bling up!

Olloclip three-in-one lens accessory for iPhone

Olloclip is a three-in-one lens attachment that adds plenty of extra zing to the iPhone 4’s standard lens, and of course any photo apps you might use.

The sneaky clip-on, clip-off design is reversible, with a fish-eye lens on one side and a wide-angle on the other. Unscrew the wide-angle lens and the macro reveals itself. The iPhone’s respectable image sensor allows the Olloclip lenses to capture some lovely clarity and detail. The ground-glass construction of the lenses is, no doubt, beneficial too.

Olloclip three-in-one lens accessory for iPhone

You’ll need a steady hand to keep blur out of macro shots, and depth of field isn’t amazing, yet the improvement over standard optics is certainly striking.

In truth, the wide-angle lens is the after-thought of the three, with a fair degree of barrel distortion, though for a small piece of kit like this it’s hardly surprising.

Olloclip three-in-one lens accessory for iPhone

Fish eye

The plastic of the mounting bracket ensures your precious iPhone doesn’t get scratched, and a small recess stops the sleep/wake button being accidentally pressed. It does obscure the iPhone’s flash – presumably that was largely unavoidable – and it won’t work with iPhone cases or thick screen covers.

Olloclip three-in-one lens accessory for iPhone

Wide angle

The Olloclip seemed secure wedged onto the phone’s corner, yet you shouldn't expect it to stay attached when it’s chucked into a bag or pocket. It's safer to unclip it and place it into the bundled microfibre bag, which doubles up as a lens-cleaner – such a small, often-handled lens inevitably leads to plenty of finger marks.

Olloclip three-in-one lens accessory for iPhone

Macro mode

RH Recommended Medal

Olloclip’s inventor will be thanking his lucky stars that the iPhone 4S retains the same case design as its predecessor. With its spruced-up sensor, no doubt the Olloclip would be rather handy on one of those too. ®

Geek Treat of the Week is published every Monday. Got a handy gadget in mind you'd like us to consider? Please let us know

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That's actually quite cool.

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Needs a fake scar.

If you put this on your phone, you also need:

1) A fake scar sticker

2) a white cat (or possibly LOLcat).

"Do you expect me to talk?"

"No Mr. Jobs, I expect you to DIE."

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Same shell so yes. Unless there have been minor tweaks?

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Anonymous Coward

Will this work on a 4S as well or does no-one know yet...?

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Bleary smeary yuck yuck.

Barrell distortion and smeary horror is pretty much inevitable with these sort of extension/adapter lenses. You can get away with a macro extension but widening the field of view is an optical nightmare when you already have a lens between you and the film/sensor.

(imagine I've inserted a back-of-envelope ray diagram here)

See? Nightmare. The only way to make a decent wide angle adapter is to take a drill and remove the existing lens first.

The fisheye gets away with it because it embraces the distortion.

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