During my visit to LA last week, I met up with good friend & Professional Skateboarder Omar Salazar who hooked me up with the amazing iPro Lens kit. I was super psyched, to say the least, & many of the photos & videos I shot during my week long stay in California were shot with the iPro lens kit. iPro Lens will be releasing Omar's signature line in the near future, so look out for that!
The iPro Lens System includes a pocket-sized lens case that securely protects the lenses & also doubles as a universal tripod mount & handle for your iphone. The iphone case is specially engineered to effortlessly accept the lenses and tripod mount....
The lenses are protected by the lens case, its easy to pop the case into your pocket & the lenses attach to the case via a bayonet - type mount on the case, this ensures the lens is always exactly in place when needed. The Lens case also attaches to the phone case & becomes a steady camera handle especially for shooting video.
The iPro Lens Kit comes in a couple of different configurations; the one I got comes with the Wide Angle lens & the Fisheye lens. Some kits come with the Fisheye lens only; all components can be purchased seperately on iPro lens' website.
So whats the verdict?
First, lets have a look at the Wide angle Lens. The wide angle on the iphone is the 35mm equivalent of a 19mm wide angle lens for photos & 26mm for video on the iphone.
The above photo was shot with the wide angle at Narita Airport, the picture was not cropped & you can see a bit of distortion along the edges, but the centre of the image is very sharp. The wideness of the image is spectacular. The colors are quite accurate & with a little tweaking with Snapseed app, it brings out the dramatic sky.
Here is a screen shot of a video clip using the Wide angle lens. I chose this photo because it also shows the flare from the wide angle lens; the lens flares on this lens are similar to the red/orange ones that you get on the larger x.3 MK2's for video cameras, which reminded me of that lens on my VX 2000 filming days.
See the whole video clip here: http://viddy.it/O7cP5C
Here is another shot using the Wide Angle lens of a bowl of Strawberries. The photo was shot approx 1ft away & was not edited in any way, the 19mm coverage of the wide angle lens is wide enough & focuses close enough for most uses.
Now lets have a look at the Fisheye lens - I was shooting with this lens most of the time. This lens is equivalent to a 12mm fisheye for photos on 35mm format & 16mm for video.
This fisheye lens is very wide. It captures a full 180 degree image, & from the image above, you can see my right hand that is holding on to the iphone. You have to be aware about this when using this lens & problem is eaisily solved by using the handle or just holding on to the edges of the iphone. Notice the centre of the image is tack sharp. This lens does not exhibit any of the red/orange flaring mentioned above nor the greenish flaring seen on the MK1's.
Edit 20 Aug 12: The wideness of the fisheye lens comes to strength for shooting VIDEO. The image is very sharp in the center of the clip with a very wide coverage both horizontally & vertically; this is probably the best Fisheye video shooting solution out there right now for mobile video. I have yet to do a side-by-side comparison with other fisheye lenses, but I will get to this soon.
Here is a short clip of Jon Cos, winner of the Element Make It Count World Finals, using the Fisheye lens with the handle. http://viddy.it/Ok2ovq
Here is another short clip of Chun Chai at the Element Skate Camp, I edited 2 clips together on the iphone with imovie & uploaded it directly to Viddy.
http://viddy.it/ObcQ8k
During my DV camera days, after toying around with various branded fisheye lenses, I was just never satisfied & I finally bit the bullet & purchased the .3X ULTRA FISHEYE 58MM MKII for my Sony VX2000 & the smaller .3X ULTRA FISHEYE 37MM MKII for my smaller DV cameras & have not looked back since.
I must say the iPro lens System blows away everything else. I did not get to do a detailed comparison with my Olloclip, which is also a quality fisheye lens. The fisheye on the iProlens system is definitely wider & this is especially good for video as the iphone crops the image for video.
I love my Olloclip & I've been backing the Olloclip since day 1, in fact I lost my 1st Olloclip & bought a nice new white one from the Hong Kong Apple Store before my US trip. I also love the macro lens on the Olloclip, which the iPro Lens system does not have.
JBS thinks the iPro Lens system is Pretty Sweet.
iPro Lens with Century Glass by Schneider Optics brings the quality of the Century Fisheye "deathlens" to the iphone; Amazing! Big, Big thanks to Omar Salazar for hooking this up from iProlens!
I'd also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Omar for the successful launch of his Levis X Nike Project; homie, the jeans are awesome! Check out Omar's videos on Social Cam to see his video clips using the iPro Lens Fisheye; & for more photos, search #iprolens on Instagram or Tumblr.
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