Smartphone photography is really taking off, and it's true that you don't need the latest and most expensive gear to capture a great photo. With that said, this Fisheye lens from leading accessory brand, Moment, is fantastic for those looking to snap more creative shots with your phone, twisting the edges of the mundane into a unique and extraordinary image with style.
You might be wondering, what is a fisheye lens and when would you use one? And the answer really is it's entirely up to the photographer and their own level of creativity to make the best use out of a fisheye lens, especially when using one of the best smartphone cameras on the market today, boasting large megapixels.
Some of the best fisheye lenses are relatively specialist and can be typically heavy, making this compact and portable smartphone lens absolutely ideal for those wanting to give the process of shooting fisheye a try, before committing to a costlier lens that's compatible with a DSLR or mirrorless camera body.
Moment Fisheye Lens: Specification
Dimensions: 27.58mm x 35.5 mm
Mount: fits to Moment M-Series cases
Weight: 73.1g
Resolution (Axis): 400+ LP/MM
Resolution (Edges): 200+ LP/MM
Lateral chromatic aberration: <1.5pm (edge)
Image Circle: 7.1mm on iPhone 11 (supports up to 7.6mm sensors)
Minimum focal length: 0.63" (15.88mm)
Afocal Magnification: 0.517x
Aperture: f/1.7
Glass: Multi-element, 3G/1A bi-aspheric design
Lens coating: Multi-layer, low flare broadband anti-reflection
Moment Fisheye Lens: Key Features
This 14mm fisheye lens boasts an aperture of f/1.7, and a multi-element bi-aspheric design, maximizing every corner of the image sensor in the latest camera phones to allow for both a wider and higher image quality than you would usually find with the standard ultra-wide lenses on newer flagship smartphones.
Aside from being designed specifically for newer phones, this lens is also perfect for phones with three-lens camera units, able to be mounted on top of either the Tele or Wide lenses on my Samsung S21 Ultra, to deliver a super-wide-angle image that is pretty crisp edge to edge without much vignetting or dark corners.
Moment's Pro Camera app also offers in-app lens correction when shooting using the app, which can fix any real-time distortion should it occur, making your images flattened while still super wide, instead of having curved edges (available only on iOS). The ability to remove the curvature as much as you’d like is definitely an added bonus to experimenting with a fisheye lens.
Moment Fisheye Lens: Build and Handling
This lens has been manufactured to an extremely high standard and quality and even comes packaged in a little microfibre drawstring pouch for safe-keeping and easy transportation. The lens sticks out quite a lot when mounted to your phone (or at least it did to my Samsung S21 Ultra) so it might not be the best idea to leave it attached to your phone when in your pocket or not in use.
Unlike some of the other available lenses for iPhone and Android camera phones that you can purchase from competitors, lenses from Moment come in a range of mounts, such as M-Series mount and O-Series Mount for example, and can only be fitted to either a specialist Moment Case, or those that are fitted with a 3D printed drop-in lens mount from Moment.
M-Series lenses are the latest ones, including this 14mm fisheye, and are compatible with most iPhones, as well as the best Google Pixel phones, some of the best Samsung Galaxy phones, as well as the latest and best One Plus phones.
The O-Series of lenses and mounts are older, created in 2014, and still support some of the older generations of iPhones. For a full breakdown of Moment M vs O series lenses and their compatible devices, see Moment's explainer article on the topic.
Moment Fisheye Lens: Performance
Delivering a full-frame fisheye aesthetic that's similar to what you might expect from a GoPro or action cam, this 14mm lens from Moment certainly does what it says on the tin - nothing more or less. A reliable fisheye lens for smartphone photographers, I loved how convenient it was to just get out and shoot with this lens as it showed me my regular routine of getting to the office and my usual journey in a whole new light.
If you're new to shooting with fisheye lenses then this is a superb one to start with as the raised edges aren't too off-putting or distorted that you can still enjoy the flair that it adds to an otherwise generic or regular-looking image.
I unfortunately couldn't try out the lens correction and flattening feature on Moment's Pro Camera App, being an android user and without iOS, but this didn't bother me as I actually loved the result that experimenting with this lens offered and the fisheye aesthetic that it creates.
When shooting video, it was a little trippy at first to get to grips with how the scene warped and distorted around me, especially walking down the stairs and trying not to misplace my steps. Overall I found the quality to be pretty decent, getting the entire stairways and walls in the footage with minimal distortion, darkness, or lag.
Sample images
As can be seen from the image gallery below, the lens captures vibrant images with raised wide angles at the edges to demonstrate the true aesthetic of a fisheye lens.
I was pretty impressed with how the images came out, and even when presented extremely close to a subject, the lens finds a nice focus and could very easily be used for basic macro photography, though it can be hard to keep it still when using a smartphone or if you tend to have shaky hands.
The additional image gallery below shows the differences in the images produced when the fisheye lens is used indoors, and in enclosed spaces, as opposed to the wider outdoors and landscape shots.
Getting a macro shot of my woofers nose was the goal here, and the fisheye lens made easy work of this while capturing a nice wide shot of my conservatory at the same time, though it definitely distorted the length of her nose due to the change in focal length when used closely.
Sample Video
Moment Fisheye Lens: Final Verdict
I thought this lens performed superbly well in almost all areas, and definitely delivered the results I had expected and was pleasantly surprised with. This 14mm Fisheye lens from Moment is produced and packaged to a high quality, and I never once feared that it would detach or separate from my smartphone, with a very tight and secure locking system.
If you're looking to expand your gear and enhance the possibilities of what your smartphone can achieve, then it's definitely worth investing in some smartphone lenses from Moment as high-quality assets for your daily photography, and even for planned and studio/location shoots too.
While fisheye lenses might be a little more specialist and niche, and not as practical for maybe studio or fashion shoots, that's not to say that wide-angle and fisheye smartphone images can't be applied to multiple genres - including macro shots - as this lens has clearly demonstrated it can handle.
Overall while it's not the best fisheye lens that I've ever used, I think this lens is a very worthy addition to the collection of a smartphone shooter, but some may find it more useful to start off with an alternative or zoom lens, such as the Moment Telephoto 58mm lens, the Moment Macro 10x lens, or even the Moment Wide 18mm lens first.
• You should also take a look at the best Lensbaby and Lomography lenses, as well as Lomography's fun Fisheye Baby 110 Camera, and our guide to fisheye lens camera tips, and how to take striking images with a fisheye lens.
