Leave your DSLR at home when you pair ExoLens lenses with your new iPhone 7

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ExoLens has recently announced professional grade camera accessories for the iPhone 6/6s, iPhone 6 Plus/6s Plus, and iPhone 7 (I’m not sure why there’s no love for the iPhone 7 Plus, but here’s hoping they will offer these new accessories for that model as well). The Wide-Angle kit comes with a ZEISS Mutar 0.6x Asph T wide-angle lens (18mm equivalent) and their new Edge lens mount bracket which features a M13x0.75mm thread for lens cross compatibility, an integrated cold shoe accessory mount and a built-in threaded socket for standard tripods. This kit is priced at $199.95, but you will also be able to buy the bracket by itself for $59.95 and individual lenses like the ZEISS Mutar™ 2.0x Asph T Telephoto lens (56mm equivalent on an iPhone 6/6s and iPhone 6 Plus/6s Plus) and ZEISS Vario-Proxar™ 40-80 T Macro-Zoom lens. The ExoLens kits and individual lenses will be sold through Apple Stores and Apple.com this November and will be priced from $149.99 to $199.99. Visit ExoLens.com for more info.

19 thoughts on “Leave your DSLR at home when you pair ExoLens lenses with your new iPhone 7”




  1. Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
    1. Always cracks me up when I see “just as good as a dslr”.
      Been a photographer for over 40 years, since I was a teenager.
      The BEST smartphone sensor, as you know is many time smaller
      than even an APS-C sensor on a consumer dSLR. Not only that,
      they keep packing more and more sensors in these super tiny
      smartphone sensors. Talk about S/N ratio, crosstalk etc…

        1. No, you didn’t, but just about every other website always claims their phone cameras, or add-on doo-dads will make it “just as good as a dSLR”. That’s what I like about your site. You don’t make false claims, and back it up.
          Also, I’ve seen you retract something, if what you say turns out to be not realistic. Why this is a mandatory DAILY stop for me. 😉

          1. Thanks! I will say that I’d rather use the phone in my pocket for pictures outside my home (vacation, etc) than take a stand alone point and shoot or my Canon 70D DSLR. I don’t like carrying a lot of heavy gear, so I’m all about finding alternatives that work very well but don’t weigh me down.

  2. I bet they don’t work with iPhone 7 Plus because of the dual cameras. It seems it would be hard to get the add-on lens to line up properly with the appropriate built-in camera lens.

      1. I toyed with a 7+ in the apple store today. it appeared as though it only used the wide angle lens for framing the image, no matter the zoom. Not sure that a slider would work if that’s correct.

        1. Aphoid, thanks for that bit of info. Still tough to decide + or no +. If cannot do an exolense wide adapter, may stick with the 7- the +.

          1. I would imagine that a wide angle adapter would be doable, but a tele adapter wouldn’t be able to use the second camera. It’s probably too early to know if it would work in general though, given that they plan to update the camera app this fall.

            Early reviews also indicate that the wide angle camera is higher quality than the tele camera anyway. One imagines that if you’re going to the trouble of using an external lens, you wouldn’t be using the digital zoom in any case….

  3. The dual lens of the 7 is going to be an interesting challenge for lens accessory makers. They can try a setup where the add-on can slide, but that is not going to work in the new mode with the shallow DOF where both lenses are used.

    We personally hate single-model accessories…

  4. But if they could make it work with the 7 plus, you could have equivalent focal lengths all the way from 18mm to 112mm. That would be interesting.

    Although personally I have gone in the other direction and carry a good-enough cheap phone (Moto G) and a compact camera (Lumix TZ80 with equivalent focal lengths from 25mm to 600mm). Total cost less than an iPhone 7 and better pictures.

    1. I believe that the Apple World news post is based on the same information that I used for my post (above). There was no mention of lenses for the 7 Plus and there’s nothing on the Exolens site for the iPhone 7 Plus either.

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