I don’t see this product often in the market, and the first time I was it was on an plane flight to the Philippines with a stop over in Taiwan on Eva Air and was flipping through their in-flight product catalog. I saw the product was less than $ 30 and decided it’s not bad for it’s price, bought it and gave it try. When I came back to the US and started searching online, looks like all over amazon
I simply looked out my office window from the SEO Department’s office at Internet Marketing Inc. And for those familiar of the area, this is in Mission Valley, San Diego on the northern side of highway 8. My window is facing the southern side and took a photo first without the 8x zoom lens.
I then too another photo outside using the 8x Zoom iPhone Lens and zoomed into the building across the highway. Like any other zoom in camera, the further away it is, the more shaky the viewer can be and if your hands are not steady enough, this can sometimes blur the image. The photo below was not using a tripod, I was just simply holding my iPhone when I took this picture.
Resizing the first image without the zoom lens in Photoshop to compare what I got out of the lens and putting this side by side, you can see the extra detail you can get.
For the majority of people who totally do not know where I am when I took this photo, to put this in a better perspective of distance, below is a screenshot from Google maps.
Using the scale of Google maps on the image, this distance is approximately 600 meters, which is more than half a kilometer, and more than a quarter mile, almost near a half mile too. Just to make sure, I used Google Street View to make sure I was referencing the right building.
600 meters away is good enough to be a good paparazzi tool and would be handy for TMZ reporters. Using the iPhone can also easily upload the photos wherever, send by email, etc. And the zoom in lens can be used to see whatever details from celebrity tattoos to celebrity diamond rings.
Now if you are planning to buy this, since the lens connects to the casing of the phone, make sure you get the right one depending on your iPhone version. The iPhone 4 has square edges while all older versions are rounded bevel backs.
iPhone 3/3GS version (image taken from Amazon.com)
iPhone 4 version (image taken from Amazon.com)
Taking photos zoomed in and very far away has a tendency to be blurry if your hands are not steady enough and tripods are recommended. If you are buying this online, make sure you buy it with the tripod. Both links to Amazon above have tripods with them.