When the folks over at Spivo sent us their Flexible Tripod Grip to review, they also sent us a wide angle travel lens for smartphones to review. I decided to review each item separately to make it easier for you to decide what you need. The purpose of this lens is to let you phone get a much wider angle than it can normally get, essentially giving it a similar field of view to a GoPro (without so much distortion).
Quality of the Travel Lens from Spivo
The lens itself seems to be of very high quality. I have tried out a number of different smartphone lenses over the years and often the glass used is of a low quality that ends up really degrading the quality of photos that you get out of it. This travel lens from Spivo did not seem to have any of that, with the lens attached my iPhone 6s still delivered beautiful photos.
Of course anytime you are just overlaying one lens on top of the other you will experience some degrade in quality. This is just the reality of smartphone photography with external lenses right now, and I think this lens does a great job within that limitation.
The lens comes inside a semi-hard case where it is cradled in foam to keep it safe while you aren’t using it. It also has a very nice lens cap to keep the glass from becoming scratched.
Wide Angle Lens
Having the Travel Lens on your phone widens the field of view significantly as you can see in these before and after shots I took while traveling in Arches National Park.
I find this to be especially beneficial in landscape and architecture photography, two types of photography that travelers like us do all the time! Having a wide field of view will keep you from having to back way up, and thus be farther away, from the scene you are trying to capture. Spivo says the field of view is 120 degrees.
As you increase the field of view on a lens you increase the distortion that occurs, but this Travel Lens is actually really good at not distorting your photos. Spivo says that it has less than a 1% distortion, and I found it to be almost unnoticeable in my shots.
Macro Lens
If you unscrew the top part of the wide angle lens you will be left with a macro lens. This is not really a feature that I have used because I don’t do a lot of macro photography. But when I tested it the lens seemed to work well. I found that one problem I had was that you have to get very close to the thing you want to photograph (of course) and at that distance the clip on the lens could really mess up the lighting on the thing you were trying to photograph.
Convenience of the Travel Lens from Spivo
I was very happy with the performance of the travel lens, the only thing that stopped me from using it a lot more than I did was the convenience of using it.
There are two methods of attaching the lens to your phone, if you have an iPhone 7 or newer you can get an optional case ($9.99) that the lens will screw directly on to. If you have any other phone or don’t want the case then you need to use a clip mount to place the travel lens over your own lens. The clip mount is also the only way to mount it to the front facing camera.
Since I use an iPhone 6s I had to use the clip mount. This is the same as other smartphone lenses I have used in the past and I have always found it to be inconvenient when trying to do photography while traveling. If I were going out to just shoot photos I don’t think it would be nearly so inconvenient, but when I am out to go hiking or something like that it just isn’t realistic for me to go through the process of putting the lens on whenever I want a wide angle shot. Here is the process I have to follow go through:
Remove phone from case.
Remove lens from case.
Clip lens over phone lens.
Remove lens cap.
Check camera app to make sure lens is aligned.
Adjust lens alignment if needed.
Take photo.
This is just a lot to go through when you want to take a picture. This process could vary a lot from person to person. I really did not want to damage the lens so I always put the cap back on and put it back in the case if I was moving between locations. With certain cases you could probably clip the lens on without removing the case, I can even make that work, but it leaves a gap between the lenses that I think causes degrading to the image.
Pricing
On the Spivo website the Travel Lens is listed as retailing for $69.99 but as of this post is being sold for a discounted $59.99. This might seem expensive if you have never bought lenses before, but it is not too bad. I compare it to the wide angle lens from Moment which goes for $120. I haven’t used the Moment Lens myself, but from what I have read and seen it appears to be of similar quality to this Travel Lens from Spivo.
You can also save 15% off of the Travel Lens if you use the code: BNSAVEDYOU15 when you check out. In addition to our coupon code you can save money by buying the Travel Lens in a bundle with the Spivo Stick or their Flexible Tripod Grip, both products that we recommend.
Recommendation
I always preface this by saying that Spivo sent us this lens to review, but we always give our full and honest opinion of the products. That being said you should always remember that since I did not pay for the product, I might not feel the price pain the way you will.
If I had a phone that could use a Spivo case I think I would use this lens way more because I would attach it to my phone and probably keep it there, I would also put a Popsocket on that case to give me better stability when taking photos with the lens off of a tripod.
I used to do almost all of my photography with my phone, but now I almost always travel with a DSLR or Mirrorless camera and a GoPro as well. If my phone were my only camera still I think I would use this travel lens a lot more as well, it just allows you get shots with your phone that you could not get otherwise.
So who do I recommend this for? If you primarily shoot your travel photos with a smartphone this lens will be great for you. That is especially true if you are using phone that has a supported case. Yes the price is expensive, but good lenses are expensive, that is just a fact. If you need to get wide angle shots and don’t want to buy a GoPro, then this lens will save you money since a GoPro will run you quite a bit more than $60 and require you to carry another device.
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