Fun with Jelly Lenses, Pt. 2

Now that I've finally figured out how to manage my fun little Jelly Lenses, I am ready to discover how they can enhance my Android-phoneography experience. I decided to start with a simple series of comparison shots to understand how each lens changes the look of my camera phone photos. Some lens effects were fun, some were crap, and others did not appear to make any difference at all. Have a look...

I started with a photo taken with the default camera app on my Android Hero HTC 4G at 8M:

The first Jelly Lens I tried was the Soft Focus. It definitely gave me a soft focus but also sacrificed some of the quality I expect from my phone lens.

Disappointed, I switched to the Vignette lens, which not only did not give me a nice vignette effect, but also degraded the image quality.

The Wide Angle lens was the first Jelly Lens to give me a noticeable effect, so this one is probably a keeper.

Encouraged, I tried the 3 Mirage lens, and I was rather pleased with the results. I have a lens filter for my Holga that gives me a similar effect.

I had doubts about the next lens, called "Polorization" on the package. I am pretty sure they meant to say "Polarization," but who knows? This lens didn't give me anything I will be able to use in my camera phone journey.

The Close-up lens really surprised me. It allowed me to focus on tiny details in the subject flowers and was much better than I expected. This will become part of my phoneography kit!

I loved the filter effect I got with the Antique lens! Of course, I could easily achieve this effect or something similar with almost any phone app.

Finally, I was pretty thrilled with the Star lens and its crazy blue filter. Again, it wouldn't be hard to achieve this effect via software, but it wasn't a total disappointment.

I was disappointed to discover that, although these lenses are touted as being able to adhere to the camera phone lens, the design made it difficult for me to make these lenses stick to my phone. In fact, I had some "mistake" photos taken when the lens fell off my phone in mid-shot.

We paid about $12 for these 8 lenses, and they are worth about that much. You can find Jelly Lenses on some of my favorite toy camera and photography accessory sites, but they generally charge $4 to $6 each for similar lenses. We found these on ebay and purchased them from an overseas vendor. We waited 3 weeks for delivery, so there was definitely a trade-off for the lower price.

I plan to carry the wide angle, close-up, star, and antique lenses on Android-phoneography adventures, and I consider the $12 money well spent.

I would love to hear from readers about alternative phone lens options that have worked for them, so feel free to comment below!