iPhone 4S Wide-Angle (Fisheye) Lens Review

When the airbnb professional photographer stopped by a few months ago to take pictures of my place, he brought a fancy camera that took wide-angle shots. It made the condo look a lot more inviting. The only camera I use anymore is my iPhone 4S camera, so I decided to try out a mini fisheye lens from Amazon, just to see how it would work. I picked the Detachable 0.67X Wide Angle Macro Lens for Apple iPhone, iPod Nano 5, Camera Phones (Camera Lens Smaller than 9.5mm).

It's tiny and comes with a wide angle lens and a macro lens that are connected. It also comes with a few little sticky-backed rings that attach to the lens magnetically. The rings don't stick to the phone very well - that's my only complaint about the product, actually. You could fix that by using some superglue. I didn't because I don't want the ring on my phone permanently. 

The lens comes with a detachable cover and cord (I guess so you could use it as a cell phone charm if you wanted to). I've also heard of people hanging the lens on necklaces so they have it with them all of the time.  

Check out this picture of the kitchen:

Without Lens

Next I stood in the exact same place (with my back up against the windows behind the dining table) and took a picture with the lens. 

With Lens

As you can see, there's a lot more in the frame. Here's another example, using my homework sitting on the dining room table:

Without Lens

With Lens

And again, with the "without lens" picture on top and the "with lens" picture on the bottom:

You can really see the difference, right? And my final example, the bathroom:

Without Lens

With Lens Just Outside Bathroom Door

With Lens Just Inside Bathroom Door

Pretty cool, huh? Notice that in the "With Lens" bathroom pictures you can see the light fixture and all the way up to the ceiling! You can really fit a TON more space in the frame.

At only $5 I think it's a pretty remarkable little doodad and I'm glad I purchased it. The inconvenience of having to take my phone out of its case and affix the little lens to the back is annoying, but when I want a wide-angle photo, totally worth it. I'll definitely be using this lens to take any future airbnb pictures I need.

I haven't tried out the macro (Macro is for taking clear pictures of close-up details.) part of the lens yet, but when I do I'll post a review of that too.