Camera cell phone add on lenses
Camera enabled cell phones are popular all over the world and Japan, the supposed land of the camera fanatic, is no exception. The latest handsets hitting the market here are now packing 3.2 Mega Pixel cameras so these babies rival some of the dedicated digital cameras out there. Its little wonder then that Japan has a feast of accessories that you can buy to spice up your cell phone picture taking.
The biggest problem with cell phone cameras is that they never have good zoom functions, the physical zooms are limited and the digital zoom that takes over once you reach the max distance of the physical zoom is terrible and distorts the picture beyond all recognition.
So to come to the aid of the needy camera man a few enterprising companies have been producing cheap add-on lenses which you can hold in front of the camera lens or stick over it. These have tended to be toy-like and are easily lost or broken and also the zoom quality you can expect from these cheap bits of plastic is not very good to say the least.
Queue these :
These stylish new lenses look the business and attach to the front of compatible phones using a magnetic rim, they cost 2480 Yen and are currently only available for the AU W21CA and the FOMA F900iT.
They come in three strengths of telephoto for zoom ( 1/2x , 3/4x ) and macro for close up ( 4x ). Apparently they give good results, I have yet to test one myself, but I have heard that there are problems when using the 3/4x telephoto on the W21CA as it shows a black shadow around the rim of the photo.
Of course, anyone who is serious about their photography would probably be better off using a dedicated digital camera with proper lenses, but for those of us with an active lifestyle and a taste for photography these handy accessories would be great to slip into your pocket just in case you find that perfect photo opportunity on your travels.