Home Reviews ,,,, macro lens, We have already talked about the Blips lens kit: they are lenses designed to work with any smartphone thanks to the adhesive attachment and capable of offering magnifications in some cases superior to any photographic lens kit for smartphones. We have tried them in the past weeks for a three hundred and sixty-degree judgment on what turned out to be a simple, durable and quality product.
The Blips review
There are three different types of kits. The Basic Kit, where the lenses are simply adhesive. Then there is the Metal Kit, the same one we received in test, which combines a metal core to the adhesive layer, very useful as it can maintain the fold when applied to the edge of a smartphone. It is ideal with iPhones and other phones where the camera is in a corner.
The company then makes available the Lab Kit which includes 6 slides prepared to immediately look at some very small details, a support to keep the iPhone tilted to the right position during the use of the slides and a small LED torch to illuminate the latter from below. , ensuring better visibility when wearing the lenses.
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How lenses are made
The lenses are sold inside a cardboard that can be easily inserted even inside a wallet pocket. This is a truly ingenious solution as they take up very little space and we can transport them with extreme ease almost forgetting to have them with us. The package also includes a practical metal case, very similar to those you buy to carry your business cards, to be able to store even two or more sets of lenses in a single compartment.
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The lens, as we said, is very small: it is represented by a sort of protruding “bubble”, fixed on a thin and soft strip. The central part of the latter is made of electrostatic material, so it remains firmly on the smartphone, while the two flaps are accompanied by an adhesive layer of the stick-off type that ensures better stability of the lens. It can be attached and detached many times, especially if you take care to clean the smartphone shell before application. In any case, the company in each kit includes a set of 10 spare stickers, to be able to replace them when the adhesive solution loses its initial strength (below we attach a video explaining how to replace them).
Four types of lenses
The lenses available are basically four: Macro Plus (5X), Macro (10X), Micro (20X) and Ultra (33X), each recognizable by a different color of the strip. To clarify the type of enlargement that each of them ensures, we have created a gallery by photographing the same small leaf (1 x 1 cm in size) collected specifically for the test.
1 of 12 macro plus lens leaf photo with lens macro plus macro lens photo to the leaf with macro lens photo of the leaf with micro lens leaf photo with micro lens leaf photo with ultra lens photo of the leaf with ultra lens another photo with ultra lens and subject lit frontally with smartphone flash another photo with ultra lens and subject also illuminated from the rear with flash included in the package the stem of the leaf the stem under the “microscope” with the ultra lens
The microscope kit
Below we attach instead a gallery with some shots taken using the Ultra lens in combination with the ready-made slides of the Lab kit.
With this lens the minimum focusing distance is really millimeter, therefore it is unthinkable to use it freehand. This is why the company includes in the kit a support to keep the smartphone slightly tilted, however on the move, if you forget it at home, you can equip yourself on the spot even by stacking one on top of the other some credit cards (we tried it, it works ).
We recommend using the Smo Blips app (for iOS and Android) developed by the manufacturer as it locks the focus automatically and offers a series of useful tools to make the most of the lenses with higher magnification with minimal effort.
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Conclusions
The strong point of this kit is the compatibility with the camera of any smartphone and tablet currently on the market. The application is immediate and with a little care each lens can be used for “weeks” without ever feeling the need to replace the adhesive layer. The writer has carried them with him in his wallet for more than a month using them more than ten times and still today the strength of the adhesive is sufficient to guarantee high stability for the next uses.
Because of their compactness, they are in our opinion the best solution for taking macro photos on the go. While it is true that there are small and portable macro kits, nothing is so thin that it can disappear in a shirt pocket like this kit, and the speed with which it can be applied on any lens is an added value of the product. The only limit is the wear of the adhesive, but as mentioned there are 10 spare parts in the package which, if used with care, can guarantee a very long usage time. Should those also run out, the company sells them separately for a few euros.
Price to the public
Starting from the spare stickers, a kit of 10 costs only 1.90 euros.
The Basic Kit costs € 34.90 and includes all four Macro Plus, Macro, Micro and Ultra lenses. The individual lenses are sold for 13.90 euros.
The Metal Kit costs € 32.90 and includes all four Macro Plus, Macro, Micro and Ultra lenses. The individual lenses are sold for € 16.90.
The Lab Kit costs € 49.90 in the basic version (with Micro and Macro lenses included), while € 59.90 in the Ultra version which includes a third Ultra lens.
The company also has a shop on Amazon
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