30.11.2015

Imagine More with Manfrotto’s KLYP + Kit

30.11.2015

Imagine More with Manfrotto’s KLYP + Kit

Today I received the Manfrotto imagine more KLYP + Support kit, the Creative lens kit and the LUMIE Muse and I have to say I am massively blown away.

They come in easy to open boxes, no cutting with scissors or pulling apart tough plastics, nice and simple. All of the kits come with a small instruction manual that is straight to the point and very helpful.

full set

The KLYP+ Support kit contains the casing for the iPhone and a very handy and cool tripod called PIXI. I was expecting high quality from the tripod with it being  designed by Manfrotto and they didn’t let me down, it’s light weight, compact, smooth and folds down to fit right in your pocket. The PIXI can be used to attach the Mobile device using the casing provided, the casing is tough and offers additional protection for your mobile device, your mobile just slides in easily. The PIXI can also be used to mount the LUMIE Muse, and it can also be used for other small compact cameras. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been out for walk and tried to capture a scene by placing my mobile device or compact camera on a wall or post to keep steady only for it to fail. Now I no longer need to worry using this awesome tripod.

case and phone

I was very keen to try out the Macro attachment for the iPhone 6. I am a Macro photographer and I love to get extreme close ups of insects and other wildlife but sometimes a full DSLR set up isn’t convenient, some days I would be out and about without my dslr kit and see interesting flowers or insects and wish I had something on my phone that could get me closer. This is where the Creative Lens kit comes into play. Once again the kit comes in a very small and easy to open box, inside are two lens attachments, the wide angle and macro are a 2-in-1 lens, with the wide angle front attachment easily removed just by screwing off, and there is a Telephoto 1.5x lens.

Both come with front and rear caps and again the build of them is of high standard. These lens screwin to the mobile phone casing for quick and easy use, you can have a macro set up in minutes.

phone and lens

Once I had set up the kit I decided to test it out on one of my pets, The Orchid Mantis. At first I tried a few shots handheld using Natural light from a window. These produced great photos, I was actually quite surprised, but they suffered from softness and image noise, this would be improved in outside conditions where more light is available. Being a Macro photographer I knew that by adding more light and a tripod I could get even better photographs.

I mounted the iPhone onto the tripod using the attachments provided and composed my photo, again I took a few shots with just natural light and this produced sharper pictures due to the stability of the Tripod, I couldn’t believe the results I was getting!

mantis handheld nat light

I was keen to see how adding the LUMIE Muse would affect the pictures, as with the other two products the LUMIE Muse was of quality build and for a small LED light it was very powerful, almost too much at full power. A range of filters are also provided as well as a diffuser for the LED which is essential when lighting macro subjects. These filters simply screw onto the front of the LUMIE, once again showing how quick and easy it is to have a full macro photography  set up in minutes!

mantis set up

I placed the LUMIE at varying angles to light my subject, again this improved the quality of the picture, by adding more light you force the iPhone to change its DOF producing a sharper photo. By adding the diffuser, soft almost natural light is spilled onto your subject, perfect. Mantis lit from above using the LUMIE Muse on full power.

mantis 3 lumie above

Mantis lit directly underneath using LUMIE Muse on full power

mantis 2 lumie underneath

Mantis lit bottom right using LUMIE Muse on full power

mantis 1 lumie bottom right

All in all this is a great bit of kit, the only downside for me is that there is too much distortion at the frame edges. If you get too close to your subject it can really distort your photograph, my tip would be to not go in so close. This also gives a sharper image. This is no doubt due to the fact that this lens doubles up as a wide angle lens, other than that, for its price, and for what can be achieved I think it’s worth purchasing. I can’t wait to get out an about with this kit in the summer months and unleash its full potential.

Matt Doogue

Matt Doogue is a published and BBC Featured Macro photographer from Manchester. His love of insects drove Matt’s passion to become a macro photographer. Last year Matt was feat ured on BBC Autumnwatch after photographing 100 different species of insect over 100 days in his own back garden. Since then Matt has gathered a huge following including such people as ‘Chris Packahm, Nick Baker and the BBC Earth team. Matt is a father to two nature obses sed girls and runs a conservation group on facebook called ‘A planet fit for nature’.

Twitter : @mattdoogue
Instagram : mattd85
facebook : www.facebook.com/mattsmacro

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