Best Lenses for iPhone Photography

You don’t need a professional camera to practice high-quality photography anymore. With advances in mobile technology and mobile phone compatible lenses, anyone can capture professional portraits.

If you’ve got an iPhone, then chances are you’re already in awe of the things your camera can do. Well, now there’s a cheaper and easier way to get professional quality images on your iPhone – iPhone Lenses!

Smartphone lens attachments have become all the rage among photographers. It is a simple invention that makes high-quality photography accessible to almost anyone with a smartphone.

Do you want to make a hobby out of your photography skills? But never had the budget to buy a DSLR? Here’s your chance! Do you want to make a hobby out of your photography skills?

We’ve narrowed down some of the best smartphone and iPhone lenses. These lenses can help you click professional photos and record film-style videos. From a casual shooter to a serious videographer, there is something for every type of photographer.

Do iPhone Lenses Improve Picture Quality?

Not really.

There is a lot of confusion over the function of lens attachments. Whether you’re using a lens on an iPhone or other smartphones, the lens attachment will work the same. Let us look at this in more detail.

When attaching a new lens to your existing iPhone, the camera quality itself remains the same. You are just adding another lens in front of the existing one. If the original lens is of good quality, the addition could help you enhance it better. However, a poor-quality plastic lens will further degrade your phone’s picture quality.

Now, an iPhone already comes with a good functioning camera with a high megapixel count. With such a camera, a lens attachment can give the pictures cinematic qualities, allowing you to take various shots.

If you’re a photography pro and have a good smartphone or iPhone, consider investing in a top-of-the-range lens. However, if you’re already struggling with your phone camera, then it might be better to upgrade your phone first or buy a camera instead.

Are iPhone Lens Kits Any Good?

No matter how superior, even an iPhone will not come close to a high-end camera. The same goes for lens kits, and an iPhone lens kit cannot compare with that of a camera lens kit.

The reason? 

Cameras and their lenses have one purpose – photography. An iPhone, on the other hand, is multifunctional. The quality of lenses on iPhones, therefore, is only better when compared with other phone cameras.

They can significantly improve the quality of an image compared to one clicked by any other smartphone, perhaps. This, while it’s nothing to boast about, comes in handy if you want your pictures looking better than everyone else’s.

Which Is the Best Camera Lens for the iPhone?

While most of the lenses in our guide are iPhone compatible, we’ve listed the best of the lot below.

Xenvo Pro Lens Kit

The Xenvo Pro Lens kit gives you the best budget camera lens for the iPhone. The entire kit weighs 4.8 ounces only. This kit includes a wide lens and a 15x macro lens. Both these Xenvo lenses are universally compatible. However, the clip does bump easily.

When it comes to image quality, the photos from these lenses give a softer halo on the edges of the frame. However, the clarity is sharp in the center of the frame.

The Xenvo kit also includes an external LED, a Dura case to carry the lens, and a quick-release lanyard. The clip-on external LED light is rechargeable, consists of a cable and has three brightness settings.

We found this lens kit very useful for professional content creators, bloggers, and social media marketers, especially those looking to improve the quality of their visual content.

Moment Wide Lens

The Moment 18mm Wide Lens is excellent for landscape photographers. It comes with a lens cap and microfiber bag to keep the lens safe. This wide lens helps expand your iPhone’s field of view to a magnification of 0.63x. The Moment Wide Lens is compatible with iPhones, Android phones, tablets, and laptop webcams. 

Moment Fisheye Lens

The 14 mm Moment Fish-eye lens also comes with a lens cap and a microfiber bag. The lens works with dual phone camera lenses and gives you a 170-degree field of view that creates some of the best shots you can get on Smartphones. Similar to all Moment products, this one too works with the Moment Pro Camera app.

Apexel Phone Lens Kit

The Apexel kit contains a macro lens, fish-eye lens, wide-angle lens, telephoto lens, and a kaleidoscope lens. Other items included with the purchase are a flexible clamp, phone clip, upgraded metal tripod, cleaning cloth, and a storage case. The 15x macro lens in this kit is a great macro lens for iPhone and will help you capture every minute detail in high-clarity images. The fish-eye lens has a 205-degree field that’ll help you achieve the tunnel vision effect right on your phone!

The Apexel has a slidable lens screw ring and is compatible with most single and dual-camera phones. It features a 4K HD 120-degree super wide-angle lens.

The Moment Macro and Xenvo Pro are also good options in macro lenses for the iPhone.

Which Lens Is Best for Mobile Photography?

When it comes to mobile photography, Moment lenses are the best. What’s best is that they are also compatible with a wide range of phones. You can choose from various lenses like telephoto, wide-angle, fish-eye, macro, and anamorphic. Besides, the brand also sells a range of filters for Smartphones.

You’ll also need to keep in mind that Moment lenses can only be used with a Moment phone case. On the plus side, their phone cases are super stylish and durable enough that you’ll want to use them regardless of whether you’re using the lenses. 

The lenses are easy to mount and unmount on the case. All you have to do is twist the lens in to mount and out to unmount, similar to a DSLR.

The first one we recommend you try in the Moment series is the Moment Anamorphic Lens.

Moment Anamorphic Lens

Unlike other plastic lens brands, Moment’s 1.33x lens uses large glass optics to give you high-quality images without distortion.

The anamorphic lens comes in blue and gold flare versions. The lens will give you cool horizontal flares with wider cinematic looks. An Anamorphic lens tries to squeeze in as many details into one scene. You will need to de-squeeze the image later. You can avoid this by using the Moment Pro Camera app. The app allows users to de-squeeze the images and videos by selecting the lens. The app will then save the images and videos in the chosen format.

Moment lenses for iPhone are pretty heavy since the brand uses glass, but they fit snugly into your pocket. They come with a lens cap and microfiber bag to securely keep the lenses in.

The next smartphone lens that falls within most budgets is the Criacr lens.

Criacr Phone Camera Lens

The Criacr lens is a budget-friendly buy for casual photographers. You can also get the Criacr 3-in-1 lens kit which includes their wide lens, a 180-degree fish-eye lens, and a 15x macro lens. If you’re looking for easy-to-use clip-on lenses at an affordable price, Criacr is the brand for you. 

The wide lens gives you a 0.6x magnification, which is unheard of in this range. The clip-on lenses are also compatible with most smartphones. You also receive a three-compartment carrying case along with the kit. The best thing about these lenses is you can use them on your front-facing cameras as well. 

The only drawback with the Criacr phone camera lenses is that their image quality is found lacking compared to the more expensive lenses. However, whether to take quality selfies or wide-angle photographs, the Criacr lens kit can be a good starting point for amateur iPhone photographers.

Moment Tele Lens

The Tele lens from Moment is 58mm equivalent on a single lens and 116mm on dual-lens phones. It comes with a lens cap and microfiber bag and works on dual-lens phones and with the Moment Pro Camera app as well.

If you’ve ever used digital zoom, then you know how the image quality can get degraded, even on great cameras. However, with the Moment Tele 58mm lens, that’s not the case. The Moment Tele lens doubles the optical zoom on your images without lowering the quality of images, warranting a position in the list of the best zoom lens for iPhone.

The Moment Tele lens is compatible with iPhone, Android, iPad, tablet, and laptop cameras. It is also one of the best telephoto lens for smartphones.

Moment Macro Lens

This 25mm lens, with its multi-element glass design, provides edge-to-edge clarity. Use it with the Moment Pro Camera app, and you get access to more of its advanced manual controls.

This is also the one lens on the Moment list that comes with a removable light diffuser hood. The diffuser enables you to keep the 1-inch distance and gives your photos and videos the no shadow effect. With minimum chromatic aberration and maximum sharpness effect, you can capture every detail in unmatched depth.

Like all other Moment lenses, this one is also compatible with laptop webcams, tablets, iPhones, and Android phones. Almost all Moment lenses would show up on search results if you were to google ‘iPhone lenses amazon.’

SHUTTERMOON iPhone Lens Kit

The Shuttermoon 5-in-1 lens kit includes a wide-angle lens, fish-eye lens, zoom lens, macro lens, and a CPL (Circular Polarized Lens) lens. The lenses are all premium optical glass.

The fish-eye lens provides a greater image range with its 198-degree field of view. While the macro lens gives 15x magnification to your images, the 2x telephoto lens and 0.63x wide-angle lens further enhance your mobile photography experience. Another excellent lens addition to the kit is the Circular Polarized Lens. This lens minimizes reflections, dark corners, blurry images, ghosting, and other effects that hamper the quality of your clicks.

Waoops Phone Camera Kit

The Waoops 6-in-1 lens kit is another budget buy. The kit includes a 235-degree fish-eye, 25x telephoto, 0.62x super wide, 25x macro, CPL, Star filter lens, and a tripod. 

You’ll find the macro lens and wide-angle lens screwed on together. However, it is only possible to use the macro lens individually, and when using the wide-angle lens, users cannot unscrew the macro lens. The tripod helps remove any shaky hand errors while shooting. The lens clip also has a spiral ring that lets you slide the lens in to fit most mobile phone cameras.

Buying Guide for Lenses

Material

You have the option of getting cheaper lenses that use low-quality plastic or pay a little more for glass lenses. Glass lenses, while pricey, can dramatically improve your image quality. However, plastic lenses might be better if you’re a beginner looking to try out mobile photography for the first time. Once you get your basics in place, you can consider making a more significant investment and buying glass lenses.

Easy to Mount

Mobile phone photography is faster and easier than camera photography. So, it makes sense to have a lens you can mount and unmount easily.

You’ll lose out on the thrill of clicking images with your smartphone if your lens takes a long time to mount.

Portable

A lens attachment should be portable and easy to carry along everywhere you carry your phone. This will ensure you have all the accessories on hand for the best shot, anywhere, anytime. 

Phone Case

Some lenses need a unique phone case before they can be mounted onto the phone’s camera. While this may be an additional purchase, the case should be comfortable, compatible with your phone, and simple in appearance. Try to get a phone case that’s useful for your phone even when the lenses are off.

Compatibility

The lenses and phone case should be compatible with other phones if you want to upgrade. There’s no point in buying a lens if you can’t use it with a new phone.

Final Thoughts

While there are plenty of good Phone lenses on the market, we’ve given you a list of the crème de la crème. With these lenses, you are assured of getting the best features you could find at the best prices.

We hope our list of the best Smartphone and iPhone lenses helped you narrow down your search. From budget buys and starter lenses to quality optical glass lenses, we’ve reviewed them all.

So, what are you waiting for?

Get a lens kit today and start snapping some Instagram-worthy clicks right away.