iPhone 13 mini External telephoto with 13 mini

[lkalliance]

Anyone considering a 13 mini for the size and weight but wanting at least the telephoto on the pros, I wanted to share these comparison photos. I shot these with and without an external telephoto lens. I got this one from Sandmarc; Moment is another major seller. A really good comparison would be to show them side by side with actual shots from a 13 or 14 pro, but alas I do not have one. So these are just comparing 13 mini without and then with the lens. I didn't do any post processing or color editing or whatnot. Just point, digital zoom, shoot, and for some of them crop.

It'll be obvious that the ones with the telephoto are better; I just wanted to show them for the benefit of anyone thinking about getting the 13 or 14 pro only for the telephoto lens but being concerned about the size and weight compared to the mini. You could consider this a way to evaluate, at least a little bit, what it can be like with an external telephoto.


SET 1

I shot these from about 20 feet away, through a sliding glass door, at full 5x digital zoom. Then I cropped them for similar composition.






SET 2

These were taken through the same sliding glass door, still at 5x digital zoom, from about six feet away. The telephoto one (the second) is uncropped, while the one without telephoto is cropped to match the framing.







SET 3

These were taken outdoors with no glass in between, again at six feet at 5x digital zoom. They were not cropped.







SET 4

These last are taken indoors with filtered outdoor light. They were from about three feet away and no digital zoom.

 

[lkalliance]

Again, I got this telephoto lens from Sandmarc. It screws into a case that came with it that I swap onto my phone when I want to use the lens. For the mini, you can get any color case so long as its black. It is NOT magsafe. The Sandmarc lens also comes with a clip you can screw the lens into that you can just clip onto the phone, no matter what kind of case. There is a lot of adjusting you do to make that work. I don't like those as much as the ones from the case, which makes sense.

Moment has similar stuff. By reputation it's easier to take off and put back on the lens, but it has no extra clip so you could just put the lens over any case (at least it didn't when I last shopped there).

Both companies have large ecosystems that comprise more than just lenses. Mounts and other gear too. And really, they are INTENDING for this stuff to be for iPhone pro users (because they are more likely to be interested in photo gear to augment their phone photography). So you could put their 2x telephoto over the iPhone 3x telephoto and get 6x optical. Or use all their other kinds of lenses.