Jake Fruia
We’ve all seen the poorly made iPhone lenses that you can pick up for $5-$10 that give you an interesting fisheye look. But at the end of the day, they’re a novelty, despite a recent uptick in some iPhone lenses’ quality. Carl Zeiss, in cooperation with Fellowes Brands, are poised to fix this little problem with the ExoLens iPhone lenses announced at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show.
The Fellowes’ ExoLens, the “first jointly developed accessory lenses” will begin with a family of three lenses:
The wide- angle (middle) and telephoto (right) lenses are described as having “excellent image performance with outstanding edge-to-edge contrast”. The macro lens (middle) actually features a zoom function, which is perhaps a first for mobile phone lenses. They will posses the same black aluminum design as many other Zeiss lenses, as well as their “proven T*® antireflective coating…which minimizes reflections at the glass-to-air surfaces and improves the transmission of light.”
Each lens will attach to the iPhone via a “device-specific ExoLensTM machined aluminum bracket using a screw thread”. The bracket is even equipped with a 1/4-20 mount and cold shoe mount, and will be available for iPhone 6 and 6s, as well as their 6 Plus and 6s Plus counterparts.
Until now, mobile phone lenses have been a fun toy to get an interesting shot with your phone, but not much else. With the development of ExoLens, the tides are turning for mobile photography. This tracks with Zeiss’ efforts to stay at the front of image capture, and expands their already versatile lens line into the mobile realm.
Zeiss and Fellowes plan on having the first ExoLens lenses by the second quarter of 2016, at a yet undisclosed price, on Amazon and ExoLens.com
Zeiss actually allowed four of their Zeiss lens ambassadors to shoot with the new ExoLens, and they each took some pretty amazing pictures. You can see those pictures, as well as check out more information about the upcoming lenses at Zeiss’ Lenspire.Zeiss.com site.
