As much as I prefer using my mirrorless camera, my smartphone is the camera that’s always with me – and sometimes, I spot wildlife when I wasn’t expecting to. The native zoom lens on my iPhone isn’t nearly close enough for these unexpected photo ops, but mobile lens maker Moment has a new option with 200mm worth of reach.
Moment has launched telephoto smartphone lenses in the past, but what’s unusual about the new lenses that arrived this week is that the new Moment 240mm SuperTele is designed for the iPhone’s periscope camera lens. That means the new telephoto lens must be placed in front of the iPhone’s zoom lens rather than the main 1x camera, extending the reach even farther.
Placed over the iPhone Pro’s 100mm lens, the optics create a reach that’s equivalent to a 240mm lens.
The iPhone 17 Pro does some unusual lens math to advertise its 200mm lens. The longest optics on the smartphone is just a 100mm equivalent. The 200mm advertised reach that Apple says is the longest “optical quality zoom ever” is actually made possible through computational photography and the smartphone’s 48MP sensor behind that longer lens.
Using the Moment 240mm Super Tele achieves that reach using optics rather than cropping and computational photography, preserving the 48MP resolution. But the camera can also be used with the iPhone 17 Pro’s 200mm computational zoom for an impressive 480mm reach.
The other thing that struck me about the new Moment 240mm SuperTele is that the sample photos have lovely background blur and compression, something that’s hard to achieve with a small smartphone sensor. But, telephoto optics can also increase that depth and background blur.
Because the telephoto lens is designed specifically for the iPhone’s periscope lens, it’s not compatible with the 1X camera and has a shorter list of compatible smartphones. The lens will work with the iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. The lens is mounted using Moment’s T-series case.
The 240mm SuperTele launched alongside Moment’s refreshed Mobile II series that now spans across ten lenses. The second-generation series is “the sharpest and best mobile lenses that we’ve ever made,” Moment says, improving several existing lenses as well as adding the 240mm, the longest mobile zoom Moment has made yet.
That list of new Mobile II series lenses also includes the 58mm Tele II, a smaller lens with a 2x reach over the iPhone’s built-in lens. Where the 240mm is meant for travel and distant subjects such as wildlife, the 58mm is meant more for portraits and more cinematic video.
The series also includes anamorphic lenses for cinematic flares, along with a wide-angle, a fisheye, and two different macro lens options. The full Moment Mobile II series is available directly from Moment.
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