I love my Sony mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses, but I don’t always have it with me. Often, I’m traveling with my family or out with friends where a large camera and lenses would be impractical. My iPhone, however, is constantly with me. Mobile photography has come far in recent years. Even so, a few essential accessories will go a long way to improving your iPhone photography and user experience. Below are some of my favorite accessories for smartphone content creation.
DJI Osmo Mobile SE Smartphone Gimbal
The DJI Osmo Mobile SE is a lightweight and foldable gimbal that will fit easily in your bag or backpack. Its magnetic quick-release design makes for a quick attachment to your iPhone. It even has a small high-torque brushless motor that allows it to respond to slight shifts — even when compensating for heavy smartphones.
Joby GorillaPod Mobile Mini Stand
This is a low-cost, versatile tripod for your smartphone. It can handle up to 325 grams and is both flexible and multifunctional. It’s little, but it’s also light and surprisingly easy to transport when compared to a typical tripod. It is well-built and uses premium materials such as aluminum, ABS plastic, and rubber, allowing it to withstand a lot of abuse. If you are a mobile content creator, the Joby is a fantastic product that offers excellent value for money!
Peak Design Mobile Tripod
This is the world’s smallest and most robust premium mobile tripod. It’s made of anodized aluminum and magnetically links to your phone. My favorite part is the ball head which allows you to make precise adjustment to your composition. For video and selfies, it can also be used as a kickstand or a grip. You can deploy it in either portrait or landscape orientation. Rubber feet increase stability and reduce vibrations. It even includes a handy tool for quickly adjusting the ball head tension.
Peak Design Mobile Creator Kit
This is how mounting gear should be made! Our smartphone is often at the center of our filmmaking and photography world, and it deserves this rugged, versatile mounting hardware. The kit includes a SlimLink phone mount and additional hardware to connect it to Arca tripod heads, 1/4-20″ mounts, GoPro mounts, and the Capture Camera Clip.
Moment Tele 58mm Lens
Without employing the digital zoom, the Moment Tele 58mm Lens brings you closer for tighter, crisper shots. When fit over a single lens camera or the wide side of a dual lens system, you can reach 2x optical zoom. When mounted over the iPhone telephoto lens, you can obtain 4x optical zoom.
Please note: To use Moment lenses, you will need a compatible Moment phone case that the lenses will attach to.
Moment M-Series 1.33x Anamorphic Lens
Typical lenses record images in a 16:9 aspect ratio. However, this anamorphic lens captures images in a 2.40:1 aspect ratio, making it suitable for widescreen viewing. It also adds black bars to the top and bottom of the video to give it the traditional cinematic flair. Without an anamorphic lens, you would have to cut off the footage at the top and bottom of the scene to achieve the same look.
Moment Macro 10x Lens
With this lens on your smartphone, you can get up to one inch away from your subject and catch details you’ve never seen before. It comes with a convenient retractable diffuser hood. When it comes to macro photography, shadows are the biggest enemy. The removable diffuser hood attaches to the front of the lens to deliver evenly filtered light across the entire subject. It’s also designed to serve as the ideal working distance for the lens.
Moment Wide 18mm Lens
For mobile photographers and filmmakers, the Moment Wide 18mm M-Series Lens is an everyday, go-to wide-angle lens. Your phone can capture twice as much in your field of view. The lens is made of high-quality optics, allowing you to capture gorgeous, sharp, and rectilinear smartphone images and videos without fisheye distortion. It is constructed of aerospace-grade metal and hand-polished glass similar to that used in high-end 4K film lenses.
Moment Fisheye 14mm Lens
This fisheye 14mm lens allows you to get extremely close to the action while still being able to capture the photo. A fisheye lens is the go-to lens for photographers and filmmakers when photographing near subjects, tight interiors, or enormous buildings. Just as importantly, in night mode, this lens produces a wider and higher-quality image than the extremely wide lens on most current phones.
Ulanzi VL-49 Rechargeable Mini RGB Light
This is a versatile mini, pocketable video light for mobile creators. It features both RGB and CCT modes so you can provide vibrant colors or control the temperature of your scene. The color temperature range is 2500-9000K. I also love that the back of the device is magnetic, and it comes with three cold shoes sites if you need to attach other peripherals.
You just can’t beat the convenience of a smartphone for creating content on the go. With just a few accessories and add-ons, you can make your iPhone photography experience much richer and more enjoyable.
