The two cheapest macro lenses come from Aukey, a popular smartphone accessory maker with a massive array of products available on Amazon. 20 Aukey PL-WD07 is the cheapest, and has a 10x macro lens attachment. 30 Aukey PL-WD06 has a 15x macro lens. Both these kits also come with wide-angle lenses, which we didn’t test in this comparison. 42 Black Eye HD Macro lens has a 15x macro magnification, but doesn’t come with any other lenses at this price.
Three of the four lenses here claim to have a 15x macro magnification, yet all deliver very different photos. The Olloclip’s macro lens requires you to get so close to the subject before it focuses, and creative uses are drastically limited. The Aukey and Black Eye lenses are more versatile, despite having the same magnification as the Olloclip.
You’ll see in our example photos how this affects the pictures we took. 20, which takes the best photo here with it’s 10x macro lens. The 15x macro WD06 manages to focus, but from exactly the same distance, the Black Eye and Olloclip can’t focus at all. This gives you an idea of just how close you need to get before these two lenses will focus on a subject. While this means you get much more detail close-up images, it does make getting the right picture more of a challenge, as the lens can be almost touching the subject.
Not easy if it’s a moving object, or a living creature likely to scurry away. For this picture (and each subsequent one from here) we moved closer to the subject until the camera and lens focused. This shows just how close the Olloclip and Black Eye lenses can get, and the amount of detail each one can reveal.
First, a photo from the iPhone X without a lens attachment. The WD07, with the 10x macro, suffers from some light leakage here, but it still focuses on the Tom Ford logo. There is less light leakage on the WD06, and the macro effect is greater. The Black Eye lens gets so close that it’s impossible to fit the entire logo in the frame, but you start to see more tiny details in the image.
The Olloclip, however, gets right down to details in the case’s fibers. Note that in all of the images, there’s considerable vignetting (blurring around the central focal point), which only becomes more obvious as you move through the different lenses. The effect is at its most dramatic on the Olloclip, due to the massive magnification, and can be quite distracting depending on the subject. Moving onto a subject that favors the lenses that like to get really close, this image shows some tea leaves, focusing in on a cherry blossom leaf.
The difference is startling, and the Olloclip isolates the leaf in stunning detail, blurring out the background to the point where it’s difficult to tell what you’re actually seeing. The Aukey lenses avoid this, creating a picture that’s both close-up, and well composed. The Black Eye lens combines the best of both, with a much more intimate look at the leaf, while keeping enough background detail to understand the setting.
The Aukey lenses take pictures you can share instantly, standing out on their own; but they don’t work as well when you zoom in further. Zoom in even closer on the Black Eye and the Olloclip images, and the Black Eye comes out on top again, due to the Olloclip’s very narrow focusing point. Macro photography works really well when examining small, natural objects we rarely get a truly close look at. This single blossom is an excellent example, and the picture reveals how sensitive the Olloclip’s lens is to its subject.
The Aukey pictures both look great, although the tight focal point means there are parts of the blossom that aren’t in focus, despite being closer to the camera lens. The Black Eye lens has the same issue, but still creates a great photo. The Olloclip needed to be so close that all sense of what you’re seeing is lost. Light is also cut down, meaning the final picture suffers greatly. A familiar sight in springtime, the Dandelion clock is a work of natural art, and it’s always tempting to get a closer look.
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