Moment Lenses

Upgrades for the Cellphonographer

Words & Photos by Chili Dog

These days a phone makes for a damn good camera, especially since it’s usually in our pockets anyway. Knowing that good things can always be better, Moment has created a lens system to make all those phoneographers even more professional.

The Moment lenses are made entirely of glass and metal, and it’s clear from holding one that quality is important to Moment. Each lens also comes with a little holding bag to keep it protected. If you’re insta-game is real serious you can also purchase a separate hard case for those adventurous days outdoors.

Mounting the lenses either requires that you use Moment’s phone case, or install the mounting plate on your phone, which is a thin piece of metal with a strong adhesive backing to it. Once installed, the plate can’t be re-used, but it’s pretty easy to remove using a hair dryer. The plate’s profile is slim enough to still use a normal case over the phone as well. I opted to use the case since I really liked the integrated shutter button for one handed shooting, and the wood grain back also looks pretty sweet. The case also integrates seamlessly with the Moment camera app, which allows you to choose exposure and focus points separately and even gives the option to shoot in RAW instead of .jpg (a feature that camera dorks like myself really appreciate).

The lenses mount via the typical twist and turn action, and are held securely to the phone so that you can run, hike or do whatever without having the lens fall off. Because of their small size it’s easy to bring a couple lenses in your pocket or pack when riding or travelling. For the first time I actually found myself taking my iPhone places instead of my big digital camera, since I could finally get the angles I wanted to shoot and was no longer limited to the boring, flat images taken on the traditional iPhone camera. The optical quality of Moment’s lenses is truly impressive. They aren’t perfect, but the horrible blurry or dark edges that plague photos taken with other popular but cheap lens kits are a thing of the past with the Moment lens system. The 18mm wide angle did produce some minor vignetting (darkening) in the corners, but it was minimal and easily corrected in Photoshop or even Instagram’s built in editing tools.