I Have My Olloclip!

I have had a wonderful experience so far at the Kickstarter website.  Obviously, all of the products I'm interested in are iOS-related.

The first product I got from Kickstarter was the Glif.  Great product.  It's probably not something you'll use everyday (unless you shoot videos everyday), but it's highly useful when you need it and at $20 it's relatively inexpensive.

The second product I decided to invest in was the olloclip.  Since getting the iPhone nearly three years ago, I have become somewhat of a smartphone photography geek.  Just about every photo I have posted on Flickr is from an iPhone.  I started out with the 3MP iPhone 3G for two years.  Then, I got the 5MP iPhone 4.  Three months later, the camera app got a highly useful HDR function.  Now, the olloclip is the next step in iPhoneography.

The olloclip gives your pictures a more photographic look by using actual lenses to create the effects.

I love the olloclip because it's not as bulky as an iPhone Telephoto Lens or as crazy as an iPhone SLR mount.  It's a super small device that fits over a naked iPhone 4.  It's 1.5 inches long and a little more than an inch wide at its widest.  There's three lenses built-in:  a fisheye lens, a wide angle lens and a macro lens.

Here's an example of the fisheye lens:

The fisheye lens definitely has a "wow" factor to it.  You take the lens cap off the large end of the barrel to use it.

On the other side, there's the wide angle lens:

It's hard to tell, but there is a bit of bending at the sides and vignetting at the corners.  The difference between a wide angle photo and a normal photo is slight but it has an interesting aesthetic.

And here's my first attempt at a macro picture:

To me, it's not that good.  But at least most of the subject is in focus.  To take a macro picture you have to take off the wide angle lens and get about a centimeter within your subject.  This is a better representation of a macro picture:

I have to admit that it is hard to keep your hand steady for a macro picture.  I'll keep trying my best.

I'm lucky.  I helped to fund the olloclip before it went into production, so I got two of them for $45 each.  Now, they're selling for $70 each or $130 for two.  I think you really have to be into taking iPhone pictures everyday if you want to maximize your $70.  I feel like I'm certainly getting my money's worth.  Although it can be a little inconvenient to take off my case and to take off a lens cap, I'm still loving it.

The olloclip comes with a microfiber bag to clean the lenses.

You can follow me on Instagram @jarofclay73 or follow me on Twitter @jarofclay73.