I shot the following images using a new tiny toy: a telephoto lens for a smartphone. I've been hearing about detachable, or, rather, attachable lenses for smartphones for quite some time, but I've only started using one after getting it as part of my birthday gift this year.

This is a 8x CamKix lens with 1.1 f-stop, which obviously means that it can be used as a macro / portrait lens, too, considering the very shallow depth of field.

Naturally, this has been a week of experiments mostly with timelapse, but with a bit of regular photography, too.

As far as these particular images are concerned, even though the focus seems near-perfect, the overall photograph in each case looks more like a film still—a bit diluted. Of course, I've yet to read any articles on the technical limitations of attaching such a lens over the smartphone camera.

Nonetheless, I'm impressed with the overall capability and potential.

As mentioned in the previous blog post, a lens like this is not a replacement for, say, doing closeup wildlife photography, but, in the very least, it's a great supplement. Indeed, one could possibly get away with only a smartphone for travel purposes. Normally, at least one of my travel carry-ons is a large camera bag!

I can't wait to see what the wide-angle capabilities for these smartphone lenses are. In other words, I'm sold!