Clutter or value added?

A friend sent along a link to Olloclip (eh?), a maker of auxiliary lenses for the iPhone 4/4S. Click the picture to go to their site.

Click the picture

This particular variant adds wide angle, fish eye and macro capabilities when clipped over the iPhone’s rear facing lens.

Auxiliary lenses are nothing new. Zeiss Ikon in their Contaflex and Kodak in their Retina IIc/IIIc folders and Retina Reflex cameras used this approach in the 1960s. The standard lens would have a small removable element which could be replaced with wide and long focus front elements, invariably gargantuan and, in the case of the Contaflex, there was even a macro and a monocular adapter. The bulk and clutter these added to the camera bag were in no way repaid by image quality. The wides were not very wide, typically 32-35mm, and you could get better long focal length quality by simply enlarging the 35mm negative more, in preference to using the attachment. Most of the ‘teles’ were 75-80mm with the Retina Reflex boasting a 200mm.

Accordingly, I confess I have mostly negative opinions of this sort of thing. First, auxiliary lenses seldom are much to talk about when it comes to definition. Look at the fish eye examples on that site and the definition is pretty awful. Second, you are fiddling about with attachments rather than taking pictures.

So the Olloclip device, and its cousins, none of which I have used by the way, fail the test of ‘small and simple’. Futzing about with add on gadgets when snapping with the quite decent camera in the iPhone 4S seems, to me, to destroy the small and fast concept, and the displayed images suggest that anything larger than a wallet sized print will embarrass both photographer and viewer. On the other hand, I just made some 13″ x 19″ prints from my naked 4S and the quality needs no excuses. I see no pressing reason to mess with that.