We recently reported that magnetic lens adapters made by a third party and commonly available for general smartphones work well on the Nokia Lumia 920. Truth be told while they do stick naturally to the 920 without a magnetic ring adapter, it doesn’t work too well meaning they easily slip off. Because of this we actually recommend using the sticky magnetic rings to ensure a firm grip by the lens adapter on the 920.
Anyway, we figured we would put the lens adapters through some testing and after the break, you can see our photo and video results. In short, we were impressed.
We sampled the fisheye, wide angle and macro lens adapters for the 920 and came away impressed. Sure the photos are a bit soft here and there, but nothing that Nokia’s Creative Studio can’t touch up.
The lenses are a bit gimmicky, especially the fisheye, but yet they work well. In fact, we can imagine a few situations where they would be fun to use e.g. concerts, auditoriums or any where where you want to capture the whole room. Macro was probably the most interesting as it really allows you take some close-up shots of objects. Granted the depth of field is very shallow, so you will only have some of the photo in focus, but it’s still fun to tinker with.
Video with the lens adapters was very impressive. The optical image stabilization (OIS) works just fine for photo and video with no interference. That results in some excellent videos, especially when using Macro.
The lens adapters can be purchased on Amazon.com for a very reasonable $18 (opens in new tab) and while they won’t make you a better photographer, it does allow you to play around and get creative with the 920’s excellent camera. For that reason, if you’re a photo buff we have to give these little doodads a nod of approval.
