Struman Optics Cinematic Wide Lens product reviews

I wear glasses, so I know a little something about good glass for vision. A while ago, you could find cheap kits all over the place, promising your mobile device a wider field of view, or analog zoom functionality that means you can see "closer" without ruining your photo with pixelation. They ranged from $15 to $150 for kits that made many promises... I bought a few, none of them lived up to the hype. The few that started out well degraded rapidly due to plastic optics getting easily scratched or dust being attracted to them as static built up.

Then a trip to Fieldays revealed what was possible, with a fair price tag. While the zoom lenses were the ones that caught my eye, it's the wide-angle lenses that converted me to a believer. So many times I have wanted to capture in-camera what I see as I look out at a mountain range, or river valley, or even just a really stunning sculpture, but I either have to stand so far away that people/vehicles/greenery obstruct the shot for too long and the light moves, or I stand close enough to get between the traffic and my subject only to find that it won't all fit in the frame. Frustration arises, and I give up on the shot or try to make it work with a panoramic shot, which usually does not work as well, if at all.

So I was excited to get some hands-on time with a couple of kits from Struman Optics, and the results impressed me no end. In the linked photo, I set the smartphone on a tripod and snapped the shot on the left, then I clipped the Cinematic Wide lens on and snapped the right-side photo. You can see that the lens provides a much wider feild of view both vertically and horizontally. It allowed me to shoot scenes in one take that used to require up to 16 photos and a lot of fiddling in Photoshop.

I tried shots that were close to the subject and others where the subject was quite some distance away, and it really made a distinct difference. In some cases, the results didn't pan out as hoped, but without exception they were far-distant-subject shots where the focal point was lost in the far-enlarged field of view. No fault of the lenses at all, and they in fact only underscored the key point of this lens - stay close but see more. The only slight niggle I had with it was that when I went to pull it from the case, the lenscap would keep popping off. It would have been difficult to get a lens cap that small size to stay on any better, I admit, but it was still somewhat troublesome when out at a public garden with plenty of small nooks and gaps in hedges for a small lenscap to roll that a human could not easily follow. In the end I used the holes on the side of the cap to run a thin string through, and attach it to a thick rubber band which I strapped around the lens. Nice nod to bigger cameras that have this as a standard feature with a corresponding tie-point on the lens or camera body.

Does it do what it promises? Completely, and in a very easy-to-use way. If you follow the on-pack usage instructions you'll get near-perfect alignment every time, however it is a bit tedious when you are doing a shoot and want to swap between lenses, so it's worth putting in the time to practice clipping it on as one assembled unit, or if you have a Samsung or iPhone, invest in one of the ready-made phone cases that have the mounting hole built-in right where it needs to be.