I’ve been taking photographs as a hobby for several years, but when I don’t have my equipment with me and something catches my eye, I get my iPhone 6 out of my pocket and take a picture. Taking a photograph isn’t just a simple click of the shutter, especially in low light conditions and if you’re doing it bare-handed with no type of support.
The iPhone 6 8 mega-pixel camera, with 1.5µ pixels, an ƒ/2.2 aperture and electronic image stabilisation, guarantees great images every time. But if we were to want a fisheye style shot or a focal length multiplier, or the option of attaching our smartphone to a tripod?
No problem, Manfrotto KLYP+ has the answer: a kit that transforms your smartphone into a perfectly functioning camera, ensuring considerable versatility and stability.
A kit is very light to carry in your bag and can provide you with an outlet for your photographic creativity using your smartphone.

The kit consists of:

• a polycarbonate case
• 2 lenses: one fisheye and one 3x focal length multiplier
• 1 LED flash with tripod attachment

I tried out the kit by taking a few pictures out and about in Civitavecchia (Rome), my home town.

The case is well-designed and attractive. The iPhone is inserted really easily. Once inside the case, you can access all of the iPhone buttons and ports: the lighting cable and headphones ports, the on/off and volume buttons, ensuring full functionality.
Made of extremely light polycarbonate, the cover is anti-slip and easy to manage. Sturdy enough to survive any bumps and falls, it attaches itself perfectly to your device and protects both the back and surround of your phone from scratching. The inside of the case is smooth, whereas the outside has a rough texture.

The back of the cover, with openings for flash and camera, allows you to take pictures without limiting (with reflections or shadows) your camera’s field of action. The name “Manfrotto” is embossed diagonally on the back.

The thickness of the cover with the protection surrounding the display doesn’t have any particular impact on the thickness of your phone, in that the overall depth is only just over one centimetre.
The other two elements found in the kit are the two lenses: a wideangle and a 3x lens.

The wideangle lens enables you to take a 120° angle shot, creating an almost circular image. The 3x zoom lens enables you to capture far-off details really easily. Both lenses attached simply by screwing it onto the cover. The lens materials are designed to be dustproof and scratch-resistant. The image results with these lenses are excellent; the photos are clean and sharp, with perfect focus, and the details aren’t at all grainy in terms of pixels, as you can see with the photos I took.

Both lenses come with top and bottom caps.
The bottom caps display the embossed Manfrotto logo. The type of lens is printed on its outer edge, to avoid confusion when you attach it to your device. The lenses can be stored in a practical little bag, provided as part of the kit.

An essential accessory for photographers in low light conditions is the 3-LED flash (continuous light) with a tripod screw attachment with a standard 1/4 thread.

Its small size makes it very easy to manage. It can be attached to the case by sliding it on either vertically or horizontally. It has three levels of brightness and can be used easily, even in a studio, as both a main or secondary light. The dimmability enables you to adjust the quantity of light according to your requirements. The flash can be used independently from the smartphone as a light source directed onto the subject from the right, the left, above or below, or to create the typical Rembrandt Effect.

With its 256 lumen output and 60° illumination angle, it provides perfect light coverage. The technology used to create the LEDs means that the image colours are unaffected, remaining bright and perfectly saturated, with natural skin tones. No dominant colour alters those of the portrait subject, nor do you get any ‘red eye’ effect.

There are no battery issues with the flash: it is recharged using the USB provided.

The screw attachment allows you to use the flash on its own, attached to a Manfrotto tripod and used as an secondary light source.

Thanks to the screw attachment, I mounted my smartphone on a Manfrotto Pixi mini-tripod, and this ensured optimal stability for my phone, with no shakiness, and also made it possible for me to take photographs from loads of different camera angles. The result was a really clean image with no camera movement when taking photos or filming.

What can I say? The KLYP+ kit enables ‘iPhone photographers’ to experiment with the art of photography and obtain superb results. It is compact, very well made and an absolute must-have for your bag. It was a great pleasure to try it out and I totally recommend it to all iPhone owners.

Below, you can see the shots I took using the two lenses.

Fisheye:

3x Lens

Sandra Corrado

I am 41 years old; I am from Salento but I live in Civitavecchia. I am a business engineer and I got involved with photography in 2011, taking my visual potential and transforming it into something tangible. I am self-taught, I love to experiment; I devoted myself first to landscapes and then moved on to portraits, fascinated by the emotions they can arouse. I also work with scenic photography, still-life and photo features. For me, photography is a way of leaving your mark on the observer. Many of my photographs have been published in leading Italian photography magazines.

Email mariasandra.corrado@gmail.com Facebook www.facebook.com/sandra.corrado.3 Twitter twitter.com/SandraCorradoph Website www.sandracorrado.com