iPhone SLR lens mount

iphone-slr-mount-e14c_600.0000001309999543.jpeg

Photojojo sells adapters that allow you to use DSLR lenses with an iPhone; the iPhone 4 model is $250, and the iPhone 3 one is $190. The result looks like a parody of all those new concealed-carry Micro 4/3-style cameras that don't make their massive lenses fit in your pocket. [Photojojo via Laughing Squid]

⟿ Follow Rob Beschizza on Twitter.

MORE: Gadgets

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

blueelm

But why?
nixiebunny

I’m sure there’s a good reason for this product to exist. I just have no idea what it is.
- mccrum
  
  It’s obviously to separate good money from dumb people. Just wish I’d thought of it first…
gastronaut

This is nice, but I was wondering where I can get mud tires and a lift kit for my Smart Fortwo
- MadMolecule
  
  This is nice, but I was wondering where I can get mud tires and a lift kit for my Smart Fortwo
  
  Here you go: http://www.doobybrain.com/2007/11/12/smart-car-with-monster-truck-wheels/
  
  (Sorry.)
- MadMolecule
  
  This is nice, but I was wondering where I can get mud tires and a lift kit for my Smart Fortwo
  
  Here you go: http://www.doobybrain.com/2007/11/12/smart-car-with-monster-truck-wheels/
  
  (Sorry.)
traalfaz

Why? Because obviously a $1000+ L glass (see that red ring?) lens can only be improved by duct-taping an Apple product to the back of it. Apple makes everything better, you know.
- mccrum
  
  That’s why I just tape a iPod Touch to the side of my DSLR. In addition to making it look cooler it also records everything in a proprietary “walled garden” format that results in me not being able to share any images with anyone. However, the ability to download apps that give my images a retro feel are really worth it.
  
  I’d show them to you to prove it, but, well, you know.
show me

You got the prices/items wrong. The iPhone 4 one is $250 and the iPhone 3 one is $190, for both Canon and Nikon.
NegativeK

I have nothing to add to the discussion; just: You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
coop

Bet the iPhone5 one is $300. Just because.
koichan

Have to agree with all the people asking “why?”

Just carrying the lens about will nearly be as bulky/heavy as carrying a full dslr.
A quick check on ebay gives you a basic brand new dslr + lens for the same price as this adaptor alone, you get a double (or more) pixel count sensor as well as other improvements too.

I really just cannot see any possible situation at all where buying this adaptor makes sense…
retrojoe

In the vast encyclopedia of answers to questions nobody asked; we have another entry.
Anonymous

mmm all that sweet glass and a sensor the size of a f*cking pinhead. coincidentally this is what Chan-wook Park is shooting his short night fishing on.
emo hex

Whoa boy, I need one of these to adapt my Vivitar 110 camera to a quality lens like that.
Anonymous

This is pretty great if you have good lenses laying around, but don’t have the 5 grand to upgrade your HD cam or the 2 grand upgrade your lens adapter.
Anonymous

correction it’s the OWLE rig Chan-wook Park is shooting with http://bit.ly/nrUGQ7
hapa

the best camera is the one you have… down your pants.
Cowicide

Do-it-yourself-rig (And to really piss you guys off it’s with a Carl Zeiss SLR lens)

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/07/08/adding-a-carl-zeiss-slr-lens-to-your-iphone-4/
Palomino

“Transformers, more than meets the eye!”

Does anyone have a View-Master? Could you mock up a photo exactly as above but replace the iPhone with the View-Master?

I would pay for a print.
- Anonymous
  
  That view-master comment gave me a great idea … that someone else is already selling.
  
  http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/11/hasbro-my3d-turns-iphone-into-modern-day-viewmaster/
  - Palomino
    
    Thanks for the good night laugh, too fun.
OldBrownSquirrel

Telescope adapters also exist.
- daev
  
  Telescope adapters also exist.
  
  Came in to post something similar. As ridiculous as this concept is, I can actually see a use for it. Coupled with a T-adapter (one of the above-referenced telescope thingies), mounting an iphone to a telescope might be useful. It has a small sensor, which makes it ideal for planetary imaging at prime focus. Stick it on a scope with 1000mm+ focal length, and you could fill up quite a bit of the sensor with the disk of Jupiter or Saturn.
  
  However, the marketing image just makes me cringe… L-series glass bolted to a trinket cam? Puh-LEEZE…
Anonymous

combined with this I think we have a real winner!
mn_camera

I was working on a studio webcast a while ago, nicely lit multicamera setup, and someone wanted a group photo of the talent. So the iPhones came out.

Horrible fixed-pattern noise permeated every frame.

The iPhone =/= a camera. At least not a good camera. What a waste of top-notch glass this toy is.
Emo Pinata

Are people really trying to argue that the iPhone takes high quality images?

iPhone has a camera that’s good enough for me to take photos of something I see that I want a picture of without carrying a camera around. That doesn’t mean the automatic focus, the below par sensor, and the general awkwardness taking pictures of motion doesn’t exist – it just means convenience trumps it all. To say otherwise is equating a cake bought at a supermarket to one made at home from scratch as equals in taste. You may not care about the difference, but anyone observant can see it plainly.

This product is just crap. You can spend slightly more and get yourself a better camera with a better lens instead of lugging around just this lens to attach to your phone in order to take a picture. It would also be a better technology to use once you sit down at your computer too.
oldtaku

Oh yeah, this totally turns your iPhone into a DSLR. Except your iPhone doesn’t have an SLR and this won’t give it one. So it’s just… a D? For douchebag?
Victor Drath

I started building a threaded mount for my Gameboy Camera a while back so I could use a polarizer or macro lens on it, just for fun because I love the darn thing, but it wasn’t gonna cost anywhere near $250.

I guess it’s… sorta cool to push what’s possible with a given format, but it’s sad this has become the most popular way of taking photos. Maybe iphone is fine for capturing your kid’s birthday or whatever, but nobody else is really gonna care about your pictures.
Lucky

As soon as I start seeing the term “glass”, I know the photo snobbery crowd and coalesced and is coming for the kill. Is it kind of fun? sure. Overpriced? Absolutely, but then so is a $20K medium format camera. Of course, it makes your pictures “better”, since we all know it’s the camera, not the person behind it that matters….right? I’d grab one if it wasn’t $250. Can’t we outsource the labor to some Indonesian factory just like all the other capitalists? It sure would be cheaper.
Anonymous

I really like the sarcasm with which this product was received! Unrelenting and totally warranted. ; )
Coal

It’s a depth of field adaptor, a device commonly used in filmmaking to give larger format focus effects on a smaller sensor/media. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth-of-field_adapter Wee bit overpriced, but I would certainly find one useful to have. Only catch I can see is that with the Canon lenses there’s no manual aperture control, so you’d be stuck wide open, which probably isn’t a problem with most zoom lenses, but when your primes open up to f/1.2, the depth of field is so thin it only has one side.
Daemon

Talk about a niche market – people who own real DSLR lenses, but don’t want to use an actual camera…
Thebes

Basically this is a DOF adapter for iPhones. Interesting concept, but the iPhone is not very sensitive as it is (small sensor), then you loose light to the intermediate viewscreen and through the lens aperture.

You also get to magnify and dust or imperfection on the adapter’s screen. Low budget indy cinema rigs will often use a vibrating viewscreen for this reason. You are likely to get some vignetting with the viewscreen as well if you stop down the dslr lens (Nikon non-G has iris on lens, Canon and Nikon G do not)

It seems like an overpriced gimmick to me.
Anonymous

Thanks for the laugh guys. Oh wait, this thing is real?
bcsizemo

@mn_camera

That right there!

Great so now I can get even more out of focus camwhore pics on 4chan… gawd. People can’t even take a decent in focus picture with a cell phone or point-in-shoot.

All this does is add another level of hipster bullshit to the mix. The iPhone can take a snapshot when needed. It has horrible color and noise everywhere. It’s focus is also suck-tastic.

Compared to a point-in-shoot Canon Powershot A610, which is years old, it is like a toy from a cereal box.

And don’t give me that BS about how the best camera is the one on you. When you are going somewhere that pictures will probably be involved you BRING a REAL camera. See how easy that is! I should start a whole wedding photog service in only iPhones. Too bad I don’t live in a pretentious enough area for that to work.
Palomino

I’ve read all of the comments and am still surprised no one has mentioned:

Why not just make a camera with a phone, not a phone with a camera? Some cameras have WiFi or accept a WiFi card. The applications would be significant and a boon for photojournalists. They can have the camera automatically upload images to a cloud service or directly to their company’s site. Look at all the crap they already shove into an iPhone, it would be totally easy to shove a phoning function into a large camera, use satellite calling and you have a major weapon in photojournalism and minor issues with licensing since the images won’t have to be uploaded, edited, stored on any other device, just directly to a server.
- Anonymous
  
  file size vs bandwidth.
- Anonymous
  
  That’s what i’m waiting for !!!
  My panasonic GF1 with apps and wifi/3g. You could get apps like photoshop, or plastic bullet, or … and post your picts direct on your flick/tumbl/…/r accounts…
  Don’t understand why it’s not out there yet … Iphone is nice, but it’s not a camera !
Anonymous

I’d actually try this if it were a bit cheaper… I have several older, manual focus lenses for Canon that I no longer use on SLRs but would be great for this use – it would give a much-needed optical zoom ability to the iPhone’s fairly respectable camera. I’m a professionally-trained commercial photographer and I find myself doing more and more of my personal, casual work using the iPhone and a small suite of processing apps like Hipstamatic, Lo-Mob etc. If you don’t know what I mean by the term “optical zoom”, well, you’re not qualified to judge whether or not this would be useful. =)
Tdawwg

The iPhone =/= a camera.

That’s BS, respectfully. The iPhone has produced images of stunning beauty, like any camera. Look at Damon Winter’s Afghanistan photographs:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/finding-the-right-tool-to-tell-a-war-story/

or any number of images at places like eyeem or flickr. BoingBoing uses them. Etc. Like any piece of image-making technology, it has different aspects and qualities, and these have different aesthetic effects. Sometimes these are perfectly suited to an event or image.

Consider this image, by Alexander Chadwick, of the London subway bombings of exactly six years ago today:

http://luckybogey.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/taken-underground-this-im-005.jpg?w=510&h=382

Would you really complain that this photograph from a mobile phone (i.e., worse than an iPhone) is blurry? For me, its blurriness and darkness are perfect, lovely, haunting: a troop of survivors heading for the light, a crowd of ghostly people trying to emerge from the Underground (with all of this word’s overtones of death and burial). Photography has from the beginning been messy and pluralistic in its technology, and cameraphones are awesome and will be here for a while.
- Victor Drath
  
  I know what you’re saying here, but the reason I call it sad is because there is so much more that can be done, so many better images that can be made from a decent camera. I’m not saying phone cameras don’t have a place, but. I dunno. I guess if someone eventually understands the limitations of these things, then they’re probably also smart enough to look into getting good camera.
- mn_camera
  
  Your fundamental error there is presuming that the interesting thing about those photos was that they were taken with a phone.
  
  Elvis and Judge Crater getting out of a UFO will sell even if it’s taken with a Polaroid, but it’s not because it will have been taken with a Polaroid.
  
  Interesting, and more to the point, unique content will cause people to overlook bad color rendition, ugly fixed pattern noise in the image, and other such things that you’d never tolerate in a photo made with anything else.
  
  Do you also equate inarticulateness with authenticity, by chance?
  - Tdawwg
    
    But that’s not an error: it’s a “fundamental” understanding that photography is equal parts the skill of the operator, his or her eye, vision, what have you, plus environmental conditions (light, weather, what the subject is doing or looks like, location, luck, etc.), plus the unique qualities of the apparatus used. Extremely expensive and high-tech cameras don’t necessarily produce the “best” images of all categories of photograph, nor do the most “expert” operators (however “expert” might be determined), etc.: photography is an incredibly expressive medium in which amateur, technically weak, low-tech images often have aesthetic qualities and capture moments in ways that are different from other cameras, unique, and possessing their own aesthetic, documentary, etc. value.
    
    It’s specious and false to say that the iPhone or another smartphone camera lacks unique aesthetic qualities, that these are insufficient to capture an image “properly,” that this image lacks aesthetic, documentary, whatever value, etc. Your bad color rendition and fixed pattern noise (which I honestly don’t see much of in the more interesting iPhone photos: “bad color rendition” is a vague phrase, evaluative rather than descriptive, and “fixed pattern noise,” wow, not my takeaway from many cameraphone shots) might be pleasurable to someone else.
    
    I guess too I tend to think in terms of my own work, where the best and most interesting of my DLSR images and the ones I take with Vignette on an HTC Evo, are best and most interesting to me in their own unique ways: there are some cameraphone shots that I couldn’t have taken otherwise, often because a “real” camera (LOL) would have been far more obtrusive, alerted the subject, etc.; or ones that have colors and textures that a DSLR wouldn’t have produced, or in which a blurry moving subject and a sharp still subject interact in ways that are unique; and in which the technical limitations of the cameraphone forced me to take the image in a way I wouldn’t have.
    - mn_camera
      
      It might surprise you to learn that my favorite photo out of all those I’ve made in my life was done with a Diana. One of my favorite playthings as a kid was my Mom’s Kodak 50th Anniversary commemorative camera – which I still have, and have made and printed images with as 2″ x 3″ contact prints on 8 x 10 paper.
      
      It led me to a small-black-bordered-image-in-a-large-white-surround aesthetic that I still both appreciate and sometimes employ. In an era of massive images that shout at me from across a room, I like having to closely engage with something; it’s akin to having a secret whispered to me.
      
      And what’s the difference? The content. Would I deliberately set out to impose quality limitations by using an inadequate imager, given the chance to begin at max quality and manipulate in a way that best suits the content? Hardly.
      
      But the hipstamatic aesthetic I don’t get. Schmutzing something for a purpose is one thing, but it’s a choice I want to make, not something I want a device to impose on me.
      
      And iPhone cameras are crap, full stop. The reason an image made with one is “good” has to do with the content, not the tool, as that good image would be good even if it was chiseled into a stone tablet by hand.
      
      Don’t confuse making good images by accident with making good images deliberately.
      - Tdawwg
        
        And iPhone cameras are crap, full stop. The reason an image made with one is “good” has to do with the content, not the tool, as that good image would be good even if it was chiseled into a stone tablet by hand.
        
        Well, no, not fullstop anything. Questions of aesthetics and value can’t be answered definitively, either in practice or in argument. The tool adds its own unique aesthetic qualities, as I’ve said repeatedly: these combine with the “content” and other factors to produce an image. But privileging content over form is just one way to look at photographs, and not necessarily a good one.
        
        Don’t confuse making good images by accident with making good images deliberately.
        
        Why not? Photography, the Tenth Muse, does this everyday in practice. There isn’t necessarily a definite line between the two: accident and luck often play as much a role as skill, technique, tech.
        
        Chiseled stone tablet images =/= photographs. Way too much bad color rendition and fixed pattern noise in the former, according to experts.
TNGMug

So where’s the one for the front mounted camera. So that I can make high quality sexy pictures of my face at the length of my arm.
Anonymous

PS – for those saying that nobody cares about phonecam photos… You don’t know the first thing about what you’re talking about. How about the New York Times?

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/11/23/hipstamatic-war-photography-on-the-front-page-of-the-new-york-times/

Also:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/through-my-eye-not-hipstamatics/

What’s really happening here is that some people think that having “serious equipment” will somehow magically give them good composition skills and aesthetics. Sorry, but you can’t buy certain things.

Hate to break it to you, but having a $4k DSLR and a bag full of big glass still won’t help you compose a shot if you have no eye. Shooting with an iPhone cam allows me to shoot images which would be IMPOSSIBLE with a full-size camera, particularly candids on city streets – people automatically pose when they think a camera’s on them (see Weegee’s amazing work for details – you can Google it), whereas they tend to ignore people on cellphones.
ackpht

Canon owners.
Alan

I wouldn’t go dissing this too much. It would allow for a real zoom lens, and not the fake zoom built into the iOS software. And the iPhone 4 has a 5 MP sensor – bigger than your standard point-n-shoot of just a few years ago. Now, even though I got the glass and the phone, I don’t think I’m gonna buy one of these. But for people really into iphoneography, this is a legitimate buy.
RuthlessRuben

Damon Winter is a professional photographer. He knows what he is doing, and he has a lot of experience in his field. That is what matters. People who are good at photography and know their equipment can make great photos with a DIY pinhole camera they threw together in 1 hour.

I own an Olympus E420, and my photos turn out worse than those Iphone photos. Does that mean the Iphone camera is better than my Olympus? No. Does it mean that Mr. Winter is by far the better photographer? Yes. Will your photos be better when you buy this silly adapter? No. Can you make good pictures with an Iphone camera? Yes, if you’re good, like with any other camera. Do you need that silly adapter for it? No, because it’s the photographer, and not the camera, who makes the picture, to quote the James Estrin from the article above.

So there.
- Tdawwg
  
  My point was more that Winter’s iPhone Afghanistan photos are great photos in unique and interesting ways that are different than the unique and interesting ways in which, say, Winter’s Angola Prison rodeo photographs are great photos. Winter’s obviously a key element in both, but the different apparatuses in both sets are also key elements that help to produce those unique and interesting images.
  
  And amateur photographers produce iPhone and other cameraphone images of stunning beauty, at least to me and their large and ever-growing audience of fellow practitioners and photography lovers. Winter’s professionalism and experience are great, but photography has always been about talented and lucky amateurs as much as the photographic “genius” and professional.
  
  I own an Olympus E420, and my photos turn out worse than those Iphone photos. Does that mean the Iphone camera is better than my Olympus? No. Does it mean that Mr. Winter is by far the better photographer? Yes. . . . Can you make good pictures with an Iphone camera? Yes, if you’re good, like with any other camera.
  
  I guess. I just think it’s a case of different people using different equipment producing different work. You seem to put a premium on tech, experience, and expertise, and I don’t think it’s always about that. I think that iPhones et al. leveling the playing field, letting both experts like Winter and amateurs and everyone else produce “good” images, is a great, fascinating thing.
  - RuthlessRuben
    
    True enough, and I think we were trying to arrive at the same conclusion from different angles here.
    
    What I think I should have added: People like Winter have the experience to consistently create good photographs. Good, period. Not every shot by Winter is genius, and not every shot by an amateur isn’t, but it is my opinion that with enough experience you can have consistently good photos, while great photos are still very much a thing of opportunity, chance and dumb luck mixed with the experience and the tech.
Anonymous

This is yet another overpriced close-up adapter, that will produce slightly better results than taping a dime-store magnifying glass to your iPhone.

-j
- penguinchris
  
  I understand the criticism in the other comments, but this one really makes no sense. It’s clearly not an overpriced close-up adapter with plastic optics. It may be overpriced, I’ll give you that much.
  
  Check the sample images at the site. It gives a unique aesthetic, especially with a lens with shallow depth of field.
mamarox

Yeah, people have taken great pics with their iPhones, but still … WHY? Good glass costs more than a decent (not great, but very good) DSLR body. I don’t get the appeal at all.

I can just imagine shooting a concert (that’s what I do, for the most part), and my camera ringing, or chirping that I have a text, or some such. Or maybe I’m just going to carry a $1000 (is the lens in the pic a Canon 24-70? That runs around $1300) lens around with me, Just In Case. Uh huh.
CH

Heh, actually that looks like fun to me. To all the ones asking “Why?” I say “Why not?”.

I wouldn’t buy it, but mostly just due to the price. A small macro lens for my phone camera would actually be nice. I don’t walk with my camera around, but I have my phone always with me, and every now and then when I’m out in the forest I see something crawling about, or some interesting flower or mushroom that I want a picture of to be able to identify it later. Or just a nice photo memento when one spots something rare (like the little orchid I saw last weekend). But the close up photos with my phone are… um… a bit out of focus.