20 Dec
Moment’s various smartphone lenses are tons of fun. If you’re a pro photographer, you probably have a whole slew of professional DSLR lenses in your gear bag, but amateurs (and pros looking to travel light) can get a lot out of these snap-on pieces of glass. The newest lens in the line is the Moment Fisheye 14mm.
As one would expect, the new lens creates a distorted effect by increasing your smartphone camera’s field-of-view to an insane degree (170 degrees, to be exact). That’s far more FOV than you’d see on phones, even those with wide-angle lenses built-in — those usually max out at 120 degrees.
Pictures are worth a thousand words so see for yourself the difference the Moment Fisheye lens makes. The images below — shot using a OnePlus 7 Pro at a local cat café that just opened near my home — show the same shot with and without the lens (the one on the right is with the lens snapped on):
You can see that you get so much more image with the lens on than you do without it. Here’s another example, once again, with the image on the right taken with the Moment Fisheye lens snapped on:
Of course, the edges of your shots will be slightly curved because the FOV is getting increased to such a high degree. Granted, you can use this to your advantage to get purposely warped shots, as you can see with the closeup of the cat’s nose in the images below.
The trick is to keep straight lines out of the edges of your frame as they are what give away that you’re using a fisheye. See the examples below for more of an idea of what your shots could look like with the Moment Fisheye lens:
While this lens is a ton of fun, its use cases are very specific. It would be a great lens to use while filming action sports, such as skateboarding, or to use in real estate photography. It would also be cool to use for artistic photography if you want those skewed edges.
Moment has other lenses that are more universal, such as the 18mm Wide that essentially gives any supported smartphone a wide-angle lens. If you’re looking to dip your toes into the Moment ecosystem, we recommend starting with that one. If you’re already dedicated to Moment and are looking for a fun new addition to your gear bag, the Moment Fisheye 14mm is a worthy purchase.
