REVIEW – Mobile photography has become a passion of mine in the last few years. Since cameras in phones have become so good, it’s easy to always have a good camera with me for most of what I want to shoot. I’m definitely an amateur photographer, but I enjoy learning more and finding tools that help me take better, more creative photos, preferably without much fuss. One of the more recent tool categories for creative photography is add-on lenses. Last year, I reviewed SANDMARC’s 100mm macro lens, so I was interested in trying a zoom lens from them as well. Today’s review is of their Telephoto 6x Lens.
What is it?
The SANDMARC Telephoto 6x Lens is a zoom lens attachment for an iPhone, which works with any iPhone since the iPhone 12 series. The lens comes with a case, sized for the specific phone you have, with threaded holes to screw the lens into, which match up with the lens(es) built into your phone.
What’s included?
- Telephoto 6x Lens
- Lens pouch
- Front & back lens caps
- iPhone Case
- Carrying case with small carabiner
Tech specs
Click to expand
- Focal Length: 144 mm
- Magnification: 6X
- Height: 119 mm
- Diameter: 37 mm
- Weight: 7.6 oz (215 g)
- Focus Distance: 16 ft – ∞
- Field of View Angle: 17°
Design and features
The lens is a black aluminum cylinder, approximately 4.75” long and 1.45” in diameter. At the small end, there is a thread which screws into one of two holes in the included phone case. The case is simple, but protective. There are cutouts for the top, bottom, and both sides where the buttons are. Once the phone is snapped into the case, the lens can be screwed into either of the lens openings that line up with the wide and telephoto lenses on the iPhone 15 Pro Max (that’s the model I have; other phones will have different lens options).
The SANDMARC Telephoto 6x Lens has a focus ring at the front. It continuously spins, so there are no specific focus points. Having manual focus on a lens like this is nice, although you’ll probably want to disable autofocus on your phone so they’re not fighting each other. I didn’t do that and found it difficult at times to get accurate focus between the two lenses. The lens is not heavy, but adding it to the weight of the camera makes it front heavy. The weight of the lens is 7.6 oz and the iPhone 15 Pro Max is 7.81 oz, so they’re almost a pound combined. Again, not really heavy but the balance is different so it will take some getting used to.
I tested the case that came with this lens with the SANDMARC 100mm macro lens and they do use the same threads, so you can use either lens with the same case. I was happy to see this because I’ve traded up from the iPhone 13 Pro Max to the 15 Pro Max since I reviewed the macro lens last year and the case that came with the macro lens doesn’t fit my new phone.
From what I can see there is no option to purchase this for an Android phone. I don’t know if that’s because there are too many models to make cases for, but I would think they’d be able to create them for some of the more popular phones, like Google’s Pixel or Samsung Galaxy series of phones.
In use
Using this lens attachment is similar to any other add-on lens. Once the lens is screwed on to the case to match up with the built-in lens you want to use, all you need to do is point, focus and shoot. I did have trouble, as with the macro lens I reviewed last year, getting the iPhone’s built-in camera app to shoot from the built-in lens that I wanted to use. Most often I could see the profile of the SANDMARC lens in the shot, no matter which lens option I was trying to use in the camera app. My assumption was that by choosing the 1x/2x or 5x lens in software, it would switch to the appropriate physical lens, but it didn’t always do that. I ended up using the classic version of the Camera+ app, an app I bought years ago when it was one of the first available third-party camera apps on the App Store. Inside of that app I was able to specify which iPhone lens I wanted to use, to match up to where I had screwed in the 6x lens.
Shooting with the SANDMARC Telephoto 6x Lens attached was basically like shooting with any of the built-in lenses on the phone. Other than the additional weight and different balance, the only extra thing you have to do is make sure your shot is in focus. With most phone cameras, you don’t really have to think about focusing very much (although you can lock focus or even tap the screen in the area you want in focus, I often just let the camera do the focusing and I’m usually happy with the results – again, most of my shooting is amateur, family or vacation stuff). I sometimes found it difficult to tell for sure if my shots were in focus when I was shooting outside. I do need to get a new glasses prescription, so that would probably help. I think this is also due in part to what I said earlier about disabling autofocus on the phone, which can be achieved by holding my finger on the screen to lock focus, then using the 6x lens’ focus dial to take it from there.
I did several sets of shots with the lens attached to both the wide and telephoto lenses on the phone. I wanted to see what a 6x shot and a combined 30x shot would look like. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I wouldn’t say anything I shot would be print worthy, but I could see trying to shoot some wildlife with the combined lenses, as long as they’re outdoors with plenty of light since the phone’s 5x lens isn’t quite as sensitive. I’ll be experimenting more with this setup and can’t wait to see what I can shoot this way.
One night I noticed that the moon was starting to peak through the clouds. I tried to get some good shots of it but I was holding the camera, shooting out my window, and I didn’t feel like I could quite nail it. The shots with the standard wide lens on the camera with the 6x telephoto attached didn’t turn out too bad, although they were a bit overexposed. When I tried to shoot with the 6x lens on top of the camera’s built-in 5x lens, it didn’t turn out so well. I can tell it’s a shot of the moon, but there’s no detail to the shot. The lower light sensitivity in the phone’s 5x lens probably didn’t help in this scenario. It’s something I want to try with the camera on a tripod because I’d really like to be able to get a cool shot of the moon with my phone some day.
One final thing I’ll point out is that the bokeh looks kind of odd in some of the shots I took. I wasn’t really looking for this while I was shooting, but I noticed that on a shot of the leaves on one of my trees that had my house’s roof in the background, one of the vent pipes coming out of the roof looked kind of blurry, not in a nice bokeh way, but in a weird way. It almost looks like the pipe was duplicated and the edges were blurred a little bit, not a soft, pleasing bokeh blur we’ve come to expect from higher-end lenses. The leaves that were closer to the lens than the ones I was focusing on seem more like regular bokeh, though, so maybe it depends on distance, or objects in the background look different from those in the foreground, or something along those lines. Another thing I need to experiment with.
What I like about SANDMARC Telephoto 6x Lens
- Extra optical zoom
- Works with wide angle or telephoto lenses
What needs to be improved?
- Bokeh looked odd on some shots
- Tighter focus control
- Android version
Final thoughts
If you want to take your mobile photography further than the built-in lenses on your phone can provide, especially if your model of phone doesn’t have a telephoto lens, the SANDMARC Telephoto 6x Lens would be a good place to start.
Price: $159.99
Where to buy: sandmarc.com
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by SANDMARC. SANDMARC did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
