Moment Lens (Wide) for iPhone 6 Plus Review

I've been looking for a lens attachment for my iPhone 6 Plus for a while now. I bought some cheap ones from eBay and they were horrible. They were foggy, distorted and worst of all, you could see the insides of the lens attachment in the frame.

I figured it was time to actually spend some money and get a quality lens attachment; and I can tell you now, the Moment lenses will not disappoint!

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Moment Wide Lens (18mm Equivalent)

To be honest, the main reason why I wanted a lens attachment is to make Snapchat stories lol. I don't really shoot as often as I'd like to with my iPhone 6 Plus these days because I've made a habit of carrying my main shooter (Lumix GX8) with me everywhere I go. Maybe this will change now that I've got this Moment Lens.

Needless to say, it looks pretty amazing on Snapchat (see gif above). 

The Good

Image & Lens quality is superb. You can really tell that they've spent a lot of time and effort into developing the lens. There is virtually no added vignetting or distortion (something that is super common on inferior wide lens attachments), and the image quality is very good (see samples below).

Wider focal length is as advertised and is significantly wider than the native iPhone 6 Plus camera's lens. Moment have chosen a great focal length of 18mm (equivalent) which is just enough width to capture much more in frame - whilst keeping distortion at bay.

Build quality is top notch. Everything about these lenses screams quality: it has that familiar luxury weight to it and is constructed from quality metal & glass. 

The attachment plate is something I thought I'd hate, but it's actually pretty unnoticeable. It is quite thinly profiled (although the lens ring mount does protrude a little bit). It works with my ultra thin plastic case no problem and the 3M sticky tape at the back does a commendable job in securing it to your phone.

Snap and lock the lens and you're ready to go. This is the prime advantage of using an attachment plate over a clip on mechanism. It means you spend less time fiddling around trying to get it correctly attached to your phones lens. Time is everything when you need to quickly capture those fleeting moments.

Perfect for travel. It is so small and easy to carry around and perfect for travel. It would act as the perfect backup in case you forget your main camera or if your main camera's battery dies unexpectedly.

Without

With

*Samples are unedited, straight from an iPhone 6 Plus.

The Bad

*UPDATE: Less than a week in I've already broken the mounting plate lol. This is totally my fault. I kept the moment lens attached to my phone and put my phone in my pocket. I was expecting to shoot more with it (so couldn't be bothered taking it off). This, paired with my somewhat slim fit jeans did not bode well. The lens itself is still perfect.

The attachment plate does unfortunately protrude a little around the iPhone lens. I'm OK with the protrusion but it does create a little chasm that makes it a dirt and dust trap. You'll have to clean your iPhone lens very often and can be quite difficult to clean as the opening for it is small.

The lens is quite exposed to fingerprints, dust & dirt. Keep it clean and try not to touch it. This is an easy fix; carry the lens pouch that comes with it (it also doubles as a lens cloth!). 

Underexposure is quite common as to be expected from attaching a third party lens to the iPhone. The iPhone software doesn't realise that you've added an attachment so it can't quite expose correctly all the time. This is also an easy fix; manually tap the exposure on your iPhone and slide the exposure adjustment up or down as necessary.

The verdict

In my humble opinion, Moment currently make the best lens attachments for smartphones on the market right now. The pros heavily outweigh the cons, if you could even call them cons. If you love photography and you own a smartphone, the moment lenses are a no brainer.

The unit reviewed was the Wide 18mm equivalent which also comes in a Telephoto 60mm equivalent and Macro (10x) . You can purchase these attachments here:

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