Talking 'bout the Macro'lution...

Categories: artwork, photos

Tags: iphoneography, iPhone, AstroMedia, Olloclip, Phoneography, Macro photography, astro media

Date: 16 February 2014 14:00:44

I count myself very lucky to be in this strange, lovely world of artwork being made on portable screens. It's fabulous to be involved in the growth of a medium that changes and evolves so rapidly.

On that subject I was with a clutch of the family earlier and, in the room we sat and chatted happily in, there was a vase of roses that Granpa had bought for Granma.  So I took a 'few' macro and fisheye shots (see >>here<<) with a couple of my macro lenses - which then prompted a discussion on which was best, which cost more and so on.

So, here are the three that I'm most fond of:


The Olloclip is a wonderful piece of kit - a serious, machine tooled 3 in 1 lens that perfectly encapsulates the phone it sits on, even going so far as to rotate happily away from the power button that it could so easily hide. The above one is the 4/4S Oclip photographed by the 5/5S clip :)

You can buy the Olloclip from a range of shops, Amazon for example, which tells me there's an updated version which has 2 Macro settings. Nuts, I know what I'd have asked for my birthday!

((slight edit: in the end I met up with and said hallo to Team Olloclip at the Gadget Show Live and bought a 3 setting Macro lens and case. Very happy with it and looking forward to more macros coming up :) ))


The Astro-Media clip - a fabulous cardboard cut out and stick together macro lens that (sadly) is only for iPhone 4/4S at the moment (although it does for the most part fit the 5/5S just a little less snugly than it does the 4). It's cheap as chips though and the sense of accomplishment from taking photos with a lens you constructed is very cool indeed.

You can buy it >>here<<


This is a rubber, almost lego brick sized lens which has suckers that you attach to the phone. It fitted the Galaxy S4 more snugly but, just about, fits on the iPhone. I like it a lot, primarily because my wife and daughter bought me one each for Christmas, unaware that the other was buying one, and both bought me a different type of lens (wife bought me a fisheye lens and daught a macro). Again fairly cheap - a £3 stocking filler at the time - and works very well for the money (although it's harder to find online. Here's one though).

Why attach a lens to a camera phone? Well, it adds to the options and allows for experimentation of image making. Which is part of the fun of the game...