Accessorise your iPhone camera

September 18, 2011

Although we are waiting with baited breath for the release of the iPhone 5 (expected release is October), technological accessories for the current iPhone 4 continue to advance. New camera accessories, available now, can turn your iPhone from a convenient pocket camera to a camera that resembles more impressive professional equipment. With in excess of 125 million iPhone owners there is a huge and growing market for camera accessories and the researcher NPD group estimate the revenue for such accessories is £250 million.

Products to offer you stablity, memory, & a variety of shots

Kogeto founder Jeff Glasse is about to release his Dot accessory which slips over the iPhone 4 to provide a cool 360-degree view of the video you are shooting. Kogeto’s Dot costs around £45  and the manufacturers recommend you put your iPhone with the Dot on a table at a party to capture everything in a different and more exciting way. Glasse is quoted in USA Today : “People love their iPhone. It’s the digital swiss Army knife of our time. I can chart my boat from the iPhone, use it for GPS in the car, as a book reader …. And for many people, it’s now their primary camera.”

Kogeto is not alone in courting iPhone users. Photojojo, a photo accessory site, offers a DSLR connector to hook lenses from your digital SLR directly to the iPhone – approximate cost is £180. Photojojo’s iPhone SLR Mount allows you to attach Canon or Nikon lenses over your iPhone for moody shots that throw the background out of focus or dramatically zoom in on the action. However, once it’s attached to your iPhone, everything looks upside-down. To fix this, you will need to download the £1.50 Almost DSLR app.

Then Owle’s Bubo steadicam setup – approx £120 can ensure your images are steadier and this has tools that attach a wide angle lens. The Bubo camera mount fits over the iPhone, giving you a good grip on all sides of the camera for a steadier, more stable image, and incorporates a wide-angle attachment that goes over your camera for a wider view.

Have you had problems taking shots or videos because your memory card is full? ZoomIt is a memory card connector that can solve your problem of a full iPhone memory card and no time to delete. The ZoomIt lets you slip its attachment into the iPhone’s 30-pin connector adding an SD memory card to boost iPhone memory immediately.

Best accessories for you

So how can you decide which accessory is best for your needs? Terry White, co-author of The iPhone Book, often lectures on photograhy and confirms that the iPhone is always his camera of choice when on the road. White believes your best choices are the steadying camera accessories such as the Zgrip iPhone Pro or the Point N Shoot grip which sits the iPhone horizontally across a pistol grip to provide steadier shooting. White believes that having too many accessories added to your iPhone will make it cumbersome and heavy and negate the advantage of having a light camera that fits snugly into your pocket. He confirms that the release of the iPhone 4 in 2010 upped the game as it offered users a sharper camera than previous versions, with a 5-megapixel sensor (up from 3 megapixels). However, White concludes that the iPhone 5 will need to step up and offer an 8-megapixel sensor to compete with the Android cameras currently in the market.

 

 

 

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