Make your iPhone zoom zoom with a 6x lens

You know, Apple clearly didn’t spend any time at all on the iPhone’s camera. I mean come on: no manual controls, no flash, and worst of all, no zoom lens. I mean, come on, what are we supposed to do with that? Only take pictures of things that are close to us? Ridiculous.

Fortunately, the fine folks at Brando—seller of all things crazy—have rolled out a 6x zoom lens for the iPhone. Admittedly, it looks a bit like what I’d expect if you bolted a jet engine onto a Fiat, but hey. I’d like to to explain to you precisely what beenfits you’ll get from this lens, but I think Brando’s own catalog copy puts it best:

The new design to run of rays can effectively avoid the contortion of image, and makes the super wide angle, the larger luminous flux, the higher visual acuteness, good for color reduction, which makes the high quality of photography.

The design is far from perfect: in order to get the best image, you have to focus the lens by putting it up to your eye, then attaching it to the phone. It comes with a clear plastic case that holds the lens in the correct position, so you don’t have to, and there’s an included neckstrap, which is guaranteed to make you look like the silliest tourist ever.

But at $19, how can you resist?

[via Red Ferret]