iPhone 4s with POPA and Olloclip

I've been waiting for this week with breathless anticipation; Tuesday I became eligible for an upgrade with AT&T so I got an iPhone 4s, and today the Red Pop (akak POPA) I backed on Kickstarter finally came in the mail. I also backed the Olloclip, so now my phone/camera kit is complete.

This is pretty much how I envisioned it back in June when I backed both projects:

And the end-user view:

 

I have to say, the Red Pop was well worth the wait, I really love the way this makes the iPhone feel like a real camera. Really good in the hand, makes it feel solid, not like the phone is about to drop from your hand like normal.

Another thing I like is that there is very little lag time, press the button and it snaps. I have a feeling it's because the iPhone uses Focus Priority while POPA uses Shutter Release Priority (meaning it will shoot whether it's in focus or not while the iPhone won't). The app is tasty too, no silly business, just the bare minimal controls needed to make everything work. I do wish it would automatically sync all the taken pics to the Camera Roll without having to transfer them one by one, but it's great that you can send the pics right to Twitter or Facebook from their app (iPhone's native app still lacks Facebook integration).

Moving on to the Olloclip, I love the dual lenses and overall optical quality. The macro gets you in about twice as close as normal. Here the first photo is with Olloclip at minimum focus:

 

 And the same shot with Olloclip removed:

 

 This side-by-side comparison also shows the wider angle and the massive barrel distortion, along with chromatic aberration some vignetting. Overall the flaws aren't that bad, and you can correct for some of them in Lightroom, or if you're shooting non-linear forms, it's not an issue:

Flipped over to the fish-eye side, the Olloclip also performs well, but is a circular fish-eye with black around the edges. My friend and drift photography legend Tram Tran is about 3 feet away across the table, the Olloclip takes in most of the restaurant (I did correct for chromatic aberration in LR):

Overall it's two thumbs up, one each for Olloclip and Red Pop.