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Trygger Camera Clip: a better polarizing filter for your iPhone 5
Just a few weeks ago while I was down in the Caribbean, I had the fun of testing out an iPhone 5 camera polarizing filter from Photojojo. While the clip-on filter worked -- sort of -- it had a problem with causing some vignetting of photos. Now Trygger is shipping The Camera Clip (US$39.95), which is double the price of the Photojojo unit but also does its job without the vignetting limitation. The Camera Clip was funded on Kickstarter and is a small plastic, metal and glass device that slides onto the upper right side of a "naked" iPhone 5. It blocks the flash, but generally you won't be using a polarizing filter and flash at the same time. As mentioned in the review of the Photojojo product, polarizing filters work wonders on reducing glare from bright skies and reflective surfaces. There's a small knurled dial that is used to rotate the filter for maximum effect. I found that dial to be easy to find even without looking. There's a pass-through on/off/sleep/wake button on top of The Camera Clip, so there's no need to pull it off to turn your iPhone off or reset it. The inside surface of The Camera Clip is nicely padded with felt to keep it from scratching your phone. As for how it works? Well, here are a pair of images using that demonstrate the effect of a polarizing filter. To be honest with you, I think the image without the effect is more realistic, but polarizers definitely have their place in the toolkit of iPhone photographers. With the deepest polarizing effect: With the least polarizing effect: The top image, taken with the filter rotated for the maximum effect, shows darker blues and more contrast between the clouds and sky. On the other hand, the lower image is much closer to what was seen with the naked eye. My favorite places to use polarizing filters are near water, where glare and reflections from the surface are removed, and when taking pictures of sunlit snow. The Camera Clip is available from BiteMyApple.co and can also be purchased as a case for iPhone 4/4S at $49.95.
Photojojo's little clip-on polarizing filter a must for those days at the beach
The TUAW staff loves Photojojo, the company that has a website dedicated to selling fun little accessories that are aimed at iPhoneographers. The latest item the staff sent for us to test is the Polarizing Clip On Filter (US$20.00), which is exactly what the name implies -- a little polarizing filter that clips onto your iPhone. If you're not familiar with what polarizing filters can do for photography, you're in for a treat. Sunlight is polarized in one direction, and a polarizing filter rotates to allow you to block out reflected light off of the sea, beaches and the air. For a complete description of how a polarizing filter can improve your photos, our friends at Wikipedia have a detailed article that describes how they work. Should you decide not to read the article, let's just say that the sky usually becomes much more deep blue, the surface of the sea or any water loses reflections, and any haze in the air seems to disappear. Here's an example: For the most part, this little clip on filter works as advertised. However, on my iPhone 5 I always had some part of my photo obscured by the filter no matter how much I moved it around. That's not going to be an issue as long as you're aware of the vignetting and you're planning on doing some photo cropping after the fact. I was unable to test the Photojojo Polarizing Clip On Filter on any other Apple device, so I don't know if all iPhones / iPad might run into this issue. I spent quite a bit of time adjusting the filter on my iPhone 5 and could never get the vignetting to disappear. That being said, it does exactly what you'd expect a polarizing filter to do. As you can see from the images below (cropped to remove the vignetting), it can take an overly bright and glaring sunlit image and turn it into a beautiful image with deep blue skies and a gorgeous ocean. For photographers who take a lot of images at the beach or in situations where there's a lot of reflected light (i.e., on ski slopes), the $20 expenditure for the Photojojo Polarizing Clip On Filter should be a no-brainer. Just be aware of the limitations of the filter and that you might need to edit your images to remove vignetting, and you'll have an inexpensive way to improve your iPhone or iPad photos.
