ZEISS and Fellowes Brands Launch Mobile Phone Accessory Photography Lenses – Setting a New Quality Standard 

The new lenses are characterized by their leading-edge design featuring smooth surfaces made of black anodized aluminum with white labeling. This is a systematic continuation of the distinctive, innovative product design that typifies current families of ZEISS camera lenses. The modern design offers excellent optic properties and the lenses meet even the highest aesthetic standards,” Scherle says. “The lenses of ExoLens™ with optics by ZEISS are the best currently available on the market,” he adds. “We have achieved the best possible technical balance between a small size, light weight and high image quality.”

All lenses incorporate the proven T antireflective coating from ZEISS, which minimizes reflections at the glass-to-air surfaces and improves the transmission of light.

The lenses are attached to the device-specific ExoLens™ machined aluminum bracket using a screw thread. The ExoLens™ bracket features a standard tripod mount (1/4”-20) as well as a cold shoe for mounting accessories. At launch, ExoLens™ with optics by ZEISS will be available for Apple® iPhone® 6/6s and Apple® iPhone® 6 Plus/6s Plus, with the goal of adding more devices in the future.

The jointly developed lenses turn the integrated mobile phone lens into either a wide-angle or telephoto lens. The optical design used for both lenses bears the name MutarTM. This stands for an afocal system and is therefore different from traditional interchangeable lenses for system cameras. The lens has no focal length, i.e. the focus is set at infinity. This enables photography of objects from infinity to the close-up range, the limits of which are defined only by the technical properties of the mobile phone camera. This makes this optical design suitable for both landscape and detailed photography. Distortion would impair the composition as straight lines which are not imaged through the image center would be reproduced as curved lines. This adverse effect has been offset by the use of aspheric lenses in the optical design. Both lenses therefore offer image excellence and outstanding contrast rendition right to the edges. Chromatic aberrations are also corrected. Bright-dark transitions in the image, and highlights in particular, are largely free from colored artifacts. Protection against dust and water spray makes the wide-angle or telephoto lens perfect for the challenges of outdoor use.

Dramatic perspectives, exceptional angles or portraits in which the main subject is to be clearly isolated from the background are the specialties of the two lenses by ExoLens™ with optics by ZEISS.

The macro lens complements the wide-angle and telephoto lenses and enables currently unparalleled close-up photography with a mobile phone camera. The optical design of the macro lens bears the name Vario-ProxarTM. “Vario” stands for the variability of the focal length (zoom), and Proxar for proximity. Like the wide-angle and telephoto lenses, the macro lens offers edge-to-edge image excellence and no discernible distortion or chromatic aberration. It is currently also the only accessory lens for mobile phones to offer a continuous zoom function, permitting the full-frame capture of objects with diameters of between three and twelve centimeters. An optionally attachable and semi-transparent diffusor serves as a spacer, allowing light to shine evenly on the object to be photographed and enabling convenient focusing, even with a short object distance and shallow depth of field.