Olloclip Tutorials

Olloclip: A Brief Comparison Article

The Olloclip is a external lens system compatible with the iPhone 4/4s. It consists of the three lenses. A wide angle, a macro and a fish eye in one compact unit. It comes complete with lens covers and a carry bag, which doubles as a cleaning cloth.

To use, the Olloclip it is attached to a naked (caseless) iPhone, it is slipped over the top of the phone positioning the lens of choice over the camera lens. To access the macro lens you simply unscrew the wide angle lens attachment.

Image 1 – Native Lens

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Today I am comparing the native lens, the wide angle and the fish eye lens. I used 6×6 and for something different DMD panorama.

This image above was taken with 6×6 and the default lens of the iPhone 4. There’s slight vignetting visible caused by the lens.

Image 2 – Wide-angle Lens

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This is the same shot but taken with the wide-angled lens, it obviously has a lot more content.

Image 3 – Fish-eye Lens

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This is the fish-eye image which gives a fuller photo but as it is a 180 degree shot you can see a lot of out of focus detail around the edges.

Image 4 – Native Lens

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I repeated the exercise here too. This shot is just the default iPhone camera lens.

Image 5 – Wide-angle Lens

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The same shot, same time with the wide-angle lens.

Image 6 – Fish-eye Lens

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The same shot again but with the fish-eye lens.

Image 7 – DMD With Native Lens

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I then thought I would use the DMD Panorama app as an experiment shot, this is the first image with the default lens.

Image 8 – DMD With Wide-angle Lens

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This is the same shot with the wide-angled attachment lens. I found that the wide-angled lens is perfect when you need that extra field of view; approximately double that of the native iPhone camera.

Image 9 – DMD With Fish-eye Lens

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Finally, this is the same image taken with the fish eye. I found both the fish-eye and wide angle caused some ghosting, although I actually thought it could be a really interesting effect for art work.

Example Of Fish-eye Lens Using The Native Camera

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To conclude, I really liked the wide angle lens. I think it is perfect for landscapes and streetscapes. I’ll be honest and say the fish-eye and I did not see eye to eye. Completely a stylistic incompatibility of course! It is not difficult to use and I have seen some amazing examples of its use, but I didn’t take anything fantastic with it. Never one to shy away from a challenge though so I have set myself the task of using it for the base of some artworks. Stay tuned!

Mel Harrison is an Australian digital artist, iPhone photographer and writer. Her work has been shown in exhibitions around the world including the LA-MAF. She has been honoured with Artist of the Day and Artist of the Month at www.iphoneart.com. Mel is active in the IPhoneography community and is part of our sister site staff team at www.mobitog.com. You can follow Mel's work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mahoganyturtle/ and her work is a available to purchase via http://iprints.iphoneart.com/artist_studio/MahoganyTurtle As a Columnist for theappwhisperer.com, Mel will focus on digital art and collage images. Her column will be called APPart and she will be incorporating a different 'mainstream' editing app each week and will hopefully inspire you to try your hand at some APPart of your own.