Telephoto adapter for smartphones - an idea (1 Viewer)

[szkorotko]

Hi, it might not be the best place to post this thread so please be lenient

I have an idea of a telephoto adapter for smartphones. Everyone carries a smartphone in a pocket so why not use it for wildlife photography? The only missing piece is a reasonably narrow horizontal FOV, which will give large magnification. So I came up with an idea of developing one because I couldn't find any good quality and small telephoto adapter on the market. There are many telephoto adapters for smartphones, but actually, all of them are rubbish.

The idea itself is very simple, I just designed the optical system based on the telescope design (quite fast F/5 telescope). You can compare my solution to a mirror lens, below are renders of the design.

The main pros of this solution are:
- small size and weight
- very good image quality (this is Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope)
- easy and repetitive mounting solution (not visible)

The whole setup you can mount on the tripod (still I am thinking how to solve it) and shoot wildlife from a decent distance (my telephoto is giving 30X magnification, which is about 1.2 degrees FOV). As you can see on the renders the picture shooting is very ergonomic, because the telephoto adapter is mounted sideways. This means that when you are taking pictures of an object in front of you, then you do not have to put a smartphone in front of your eyes just to see what is on the display (I hope you can visualize this ).

What do you think about such solution? Would that be a good idea to proceed with a prototype? What do you think is important in wildlife photography from equipment perspective? Any answers would be much appreciated.

If you would like to know more about this project then go visit me on twitter:
https://twitter.com/MagnificoTech
or
http://magnifico.tech/

Best regards,
Simon

 

[Hauksen]

Hi Simon,

What do you think about such solution? Would that be a good idea to proceed with a prototype? What do you think is important in wildlife photography from equipment perspective?

Great idea!

I'm not sure how well your way of mounting would work, though ... at 30x magnification, it's a bit of a challenge to aim accurately at a bird.

I've experimented with a 3D printed smartphone adapter to my spotting scope, which offers a 20x - 60x magnification. The large body of the scope gives you some reference for aiming at the bird, but it's still not really intuitive (though half of the problem might be to get the phone to focus). I imagine it might be more difficult with a smaller rig.

The light weight of your lens would be a great advantage, but at 30x magnification, it's probably not possible to use it with consistency without a tripod, so you have to figure in the weight of a (light) tripod when comparing systems.

For people who already have a spotting scope, the your lens might also not be super attractive in comparison to a smartphone adapter.

One problem with everything you attach to smartphones is that the adapter tends to be type-specific, which makes it difficult to arrive at a standard product (if that's what you have in mind).

Overall, a very creative solution! I hope you keep us updated here

Regards,

Henning