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Surprisingly sharp: Inmacus 18mm HD Wide Angle Kit lens review

Lars Rehm | Published: Apr 22, 2016 at 11:50 UTC

Review: Inmacus 18mm HD Wide Angle Kit

Inmacus is a fairly new player in the iPhone add-on lens arena, but its 18mm HD Wide Angle HD Kit shows some promise for expanding your iPhone's creative capabilities. The kit not only includes the advertised wide-angle lens, but also a circular polarizer and a close-up filter. All three attachments screw into a plastic mounting adapter that is specifically designed for use with either the iPhone 6/6s or the larger 6 Plus/6s Plus. Unfortunately, the macro filter and polarizer can only be used directly on the iPhone lens and do not fit onto the wide-angle. The ability to combine them could have been appealing, especially the polarizer.

The adapter does feel a little cheaply made but did not cause any problems in our test. What's more important is the optical quality of the lenses. The wide-angle lens is comprised of two elements, and offers an equivalent focal length of 18mm. It also accepts 30mm screw-in filters. This means you get approximately a 50% wider field of view than with the iPhone's standard lens. This makes the Inmacus an interesting proposition for those who like to shoot landscapes and architectural images. That said, the focal length also works well for the occasional quirky wide-angle portrait.


iPhone 6s Plus	iPhone 6s Plus with Inmacus 18mm wide angle lens

As you can see in the samples above and below, in terms of image quality the lens does a very good job. It tends to add a touch more contrast to the standard iPhone output but overall hardly any impact on color and tonality is noticeable. The same is true for image detail. The Inmacus lens is sharp almost into the extreme corners and image detail does not noticeably suffer compared to the standard image.

As you would expect from such a wide-angle lens some barrel distortion is noticeable if you have straight lines in your scene but it is well within acceptable limits. The lens' most critical optical problem is very noticeable vignetting. On our test unit it is most pronounced in the bottom right corner and quite intrusive in brighter scenes as you can see in the image below on the right.


iPhone 6s Plus with Inmacus 18mm wide angle lens	iPhone 6s Plus with Inmacus 18mm wide angle lens

100% crop: good sharpness across the frame	100% crop: some vignetting is noticeable

If you unscrew the wide angle lens from the adapter you can replace it with the circular polarizer which works in just the same way as you are used to from your DSLR or system camera. The filter reduces reflections and increases contrast which tends to work especially well with blue skies. The effect can be adjusted by turning the filter's front element. Like with the wide-angle lens, there is no noticeable impact on image detail when using the filter as you can see when clicking through to the full-size versions of the samples below.


Standard iPhone 6s Plus	with Circular Polarizer

The third component of the package is a close-up filter that reduces the focusing distance to 5cm. With the iPhone's relatively wide lens this doesn't allow for the kind of macro shots you get from a DSLR and (say) a 100mm macro lens, but it lets you capture shots that otherwise would not have been possible on the iPhone. With such close focus distances depth-of-field can get quite shallow, creating a nice background blur and again image detail is very good. If smartphone macro photography is your thing Inmacus also offers a dedicated set of three macro filters that can be combined for extended magnification and that we hope to test soon as well.


Inmacus macro filter	Inmacus macro filter

100% crop	100% crop

You can see more samples from the lens and both filters in the gallery below.

Conclusion

Whether it makes sense to use add-on lenses on a smartphone camera is almost a philosophical question. If you have no problem with slightly reducing the "always ready to snap" factor of your iPhone and carrying some lightweight extra equipment, the Inmacus 18mm HD Wide Angle Kit for the iPhone 6 and 6s series is a versatile kit that offers very good optical quality across all components.

At a retail price of currently around $60 it provides an affordable way of increasing the creative potential of your Apple device without breaking the bank. Just make sure you can live with some vignetting on the wide-angle lens and be aware that the kit is specific to either the iPhone 6/6s or the respective Plus counterparts, so a future device upgrade might also mean a lens upgrade.

Pros:

Wide-angle lens provides very useful 18mm equivalent focal range
Circular polarizer works efficiently
Very good optical quality on all three components
Very lightweight and easy to carry in a provided pouch

Cons:

Adapter feels a little flimsy
Some vignetting on wide-angle lens
Polarizer cannot be combined with wide angle lens

@larsrehm

Comments

Total comments: 41

The problem with these add-on lenses is that they never work with 3rd party cases like the Otterbox Defender or they would be a lot more interesting.

0 upvotes

I see waterpainting photo... Maybe you guys should not use iPhone to take photo.. Hahahha...

1 upvote

Well, if I get this and the Miggo Pictar "grip" i will end up with a camera set up almost the size of my Sony A7 but with cellphone IQ. http://www.dpreview.com/news/1219763835/miggo-wants-to-dslr-your-iphone-with-the-pictar-grip

6 upvotes

Not sure what universe you people live in. A sharp lens with good IQ does NOT capture photos that look like a watercolor painting!

Edited 1 minute after posting

4 upvotes

well, what you describe as watercolor painting is much more down to the sensor than the lens. Crucially the Inmacus lens does not soften the iPhone image.

7 upvotes

...or to aggressive NR, pretty common in mobile phones for obvious reasons.

Madrid, BTW ;-)

2 upvotes

Looks like a neat little kit, but I wish they offered some manner of case solution. That little corner clip thing doesn't look like it will play well with my Otterbox Commuter and I'm not going to go through the hassle of removing that every time I want to use one of the supplemental lens options. If Inmacus offered a case that would mount the lenses and would replace my Otterbox, I'd look into them.

1 upvote

I think it makes an iphone look like a Minion! Just need a blue and yellow case to top it off! ;-)

On the other hand, photo quality looks pretty good. :-)

2 upvotes

i've played with cheap ebay 3-in-1 lenses and they are crap. I wanted to try wide lens for dashcam video recording. Lose quality over wide. Didn't work for me. For stills i take several vertical or horizontal pictures and stitch them. Works for me and no need to carry more gadgets.

0 upvotes

So ? Good for you , whatta you want a cookie ? What does any of that mean in relation to the article ? Oh that would be nothing

3 upvotes

Exactly the reason why I have the new LG G5. Wide angle lens built in without the need for bulky add ons.

2 upvotes

That camera is 8mp and fisheye-ish

0 upvotes

It is not fish eye. It's ultra wide. And 8mp is more that enough for its intended purpose.

0 upvotes

Hm, focal length of the iPhone camera is 4.15mm. 18mm does't make that wider. OK, it is equivalent 18mm. But equivalent to what? 18mm on a 36mmx24mm-camera, obviously. OK. But writing 18mm on the lens? Really?

0 upvotes

it is pretty common to use the equivalent focal length on smartphones, compact cameras, etc...so I can't see anything wrong with writing it on the lens, gives the consumer an idea of what they are getting.

5 upvotes

You are one of those people aren't you ? Most people familiar with anything photo would have to assume it is an equivalent idea and the 18mm is a term people understand for wide .. C'mon man it goes on a darn phone .. If it was on a dslr then I feel you .. Splitting hairs here proves what ?

2 upvotes

I know it is common and why. But even on compact cameras the real focal length is written on the front of the lens. This just feels wrong. Even when it is just for a phone. It is an ca. 0.6x lens. That should be written on it. I konw it is not the end of our civilisation. Not that particular one. But in general, part of.

0 upvotes

It's a standard that most photographers understand. It's been that way for years and it helps photogs understand what FOV to expect. Granted they could put an "eq." at the end for the pickiest of us. "18mm eq." But for 99.9% of us it's a given.

0 upvotes

Sure, everybody knows. But I think they can advertise it with 18mm, they can write it on the package, but on the lens is too much. Yes, "18mm eq." would be exceptable.

0 upvotes

This lens is indeed surprisingly good. Sure, it's not going to make a smartphone produce DSLR-quality photos but the results are better than most of the garbage floating around in the world of lens attachments, and it's a pocketable wide angle lens, which is no mean feat.

That being said, though, I still can't see any reason why anyone would want to buy one of these. You're basically now carrying two devices instead of one...wouldn't you rather have that second decide be a real camera?

1 upvote

Er, "be a real camera?"

0 upvotes

What is a 'real' camera?
Something that actually takes 'real' photos?
...As opposed to what? Something that takes 'imaginary' photos?

Edited 44 seconds after posting

2 upvotes

You know a "real camera" the size of this lens kit?

1 upvote

I define a real camera as a device that allows you adjust ALL parameters to your liking (aperture, shutter speed, contrast, Noise reduction, etc.) It doesn't necessarily have to be a camera that can shoot RAW, but I'd like to decide if I need so-so NR, his much contrast, want this shutter speed, this aperture (if available) and what not before the photo is taken. With the iPhone and many other simplified camera apps, they are basically snapshot cameras. If there was an app that let you turn off NR, allowed you to change contrast, sat, sharpness before an image is processed, then I'd consider it somewhat real.

For now, we're stuck with the Apple "preset" settings. Sure we can change them post, but that's on top of the settings that Apple chooses for us, hence imo it's not a "real" cam but it does takes great quick/snap shots of most general things.

0 upvotes

By "real camera" I mean a device that is intended to be a camera (take photos and/or videos) and nothing else. ;)

Smartphones contain cameras but their purpose isn't to be a camera first (although there are exceptions).

0 upvotes