There's no shortage of external lenses for your smartphone. Today, you can buy a variety of low-quality optics that add distortion to your photos or opt for the high-dollar DSLR lens mounts. Moment, a new company made up of employees from former action-camera maker Contour, wants to bridge that gap with high-quality lenses for your smartphone that don't take over the entire back of your phone.
Moment is launching a Kickstarter to bring a telephoto and wide-angle lens to the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy lines. The lenses use a thin piece of metal (it's less than half a millimeter) that adheres to the back of your phone. That plate acts as a mount for the lenses. According to Moment, it's even thin enough to work with most cases.
The wide-angle (roughly equivalent to 18mm) and telephoto lens (roughly equivalent to 60mm) attach via a bayonet mount. Like on a DSLR, you just line up the lens with the plate mount, push in, and turn to mount it to your phone. The multi-element glass is designed in the same fashion as lenses for HD film. In fact, the optics are fabricated using the same high-precision equipment and factory used for 4K cameras. The end result, according to Moment, is no distortion at the edges of images and minimal chromatic aberration (when the colors of an image are slightly off center from the subject, that's chromatic aberration) in a tiny, pocketable package.
Because co-founder Marc Barros wanted the lenses to mount and unmount quickly, the company even prototyped using magnets as the mounting mechanism. Unfortunately, they weren't able to get the powerful connection they needed so they stuck with a more traditional bayonet mount.
The Kickstarter for the Moment lenses begins today. Pledge $50 for a single lens or $100 for both. Barros says that's about 50 percent of what the lenses will go for when they hit mass production. Estimated delivery is June. But like all Kickstarter projects, expect that timetable to be relatively fluid.
