iPhone 3G macro — shoot close and quite sharp
By Gareth Powell
The Clarifi iPhone Case with Macro Lens fits on your iPhone 3G iPhone 3G macro — note carefully not earlier models — allows you to take macro pictures. That is pictures up close and personal so that the beauty of the inside of a flower or of a spider’s web becomes apparent.
This new device costs $24.99 from ThinkGeek and you will undoubtedly get pictures that look as if they have been taken through a gadget as opposed to a real lens.
The fault lies not with the designers of ThinkGeek who are undoubtedly splendid chaps and are always thinking of the end user.
The fault lies with the camera — using that term in its loosest and broadest sense — which is built in to the iPhone 3G. This is , in a sense, a phone which is a camera which is a digital assistant which is a music player and a video viewer which has the greatest control features ever seen on a piece of digital equipment. Nearly. Take out the camera bit and you are there.
We need a new word for camera in cases like this. One would suggest snapper but it has piscatorial connotations.
The problem is this is a 2 megapixel camera and it is great for snapshots, for moments you want to record, for shots taken, as it were, on the fly. But do not confuse it with a serious digital camera. It is not that and, in fairness to Apple, that has never been suggested.
So bung another lens on the front of a not very good lens and what you get is the quality of the second lens, not the first.
So the Clarifi iPhone Case does not, repeat not, make the digital camera in iPhone better. It just allows it to take pictures which are closer up. Not in itself a bad idea. And if, at the same time, it protects the iPod it is a good thing.
The publicity is a trifle misleading. Part of the marketing blurb recorded on Coolest Gadgets reads:
‘Protect your iPhone and take close-up macro photos to boot. The Clarifi iPhone Case with Macro Lens makes blurry photos of secret documents a thing of the past. Simply slide the built-in lens over your iPhone’s camera and take crystal clear shots of business cards, documents or any other close-up item. Then you can use those photos with some cool free iPhone apps like Snappr which scans barcodes in stores to find you the best prices, or Evernote which takes photos you shoot and creates a searchable picture database from any text in the photo.’
All this for $24.99? It will be good fun but it is not a serious macro device. And it will not work with earlier models than the iPhone 3G.
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January 18th, 2009
This is an awesome product, not perfect but a good solution to close-up photography.
Thanks for the info,
Tony.
January 19th, 2009
I am a devoted fan of close-up photograph. Hope to publish results soon but am about to fly to Thailand so am in small panic. As you say, it ain’t perfect but at least it is trying.