I am so grateful for your review. My heart sank as I had spent 2 days watching reviews and took the jump to order the case and Telephoto 2x. And just after ordering I watched your video. 30 min in, I was ready to cancel my order, amazon sent an email that it had been dispatched and I could not cancel it. Should I just return it untouched or try it on my iPhone13 pro and probably waste 165£ :(. I am quite angry at the way the company has been operating, in their marketing and promoting to youtuber early lenses that may not be representative.
Hi Jer, thanks for a great in-depth and candid review of this Shift-Cam lens. Certainly an eye-opening video in many respects. Thanks for doing this type of review. I hit the like button and I have started following you as well. I’m looking forward to seeing your upcoming videos.
Thanks, I'm a total photography newb. I almost bought these after another photography RU-vidr with hundreds of thousands of subscribers promoted the lens. But I decided to scour Reddit for reviews and other photographers started calling BS on their terminology. Then I stumbled onto your video which explained the BS.
You're welcome :) The funny thing about those photography RU-vidrs with thousands+ followers is they will say how great and useful the lens is when reviewing it, or when making a video about "iPhone accessories you should get", but they NEVER use the lenses when making their own videos, and when they make a normal "get good video from your phone" video they don't mention them either. It's as if they know the phone is better off without them. What you need is a variable ND filter for outdoors, lights for indoors, and a good microphone system, not add-on lenses.
The Blackmagic Camera App just added audio monitoring to the app and all you have to do is go to the audio settings and turn on audio monitor and it’ll set the monitoring to the microphone so you should be able to hear it in the headphones. If that doesn’t work, check the audio output and make sure it says Elgato wave 1 and if it does, then it should work
I was attending an event recently attempting to video tape someone at a conference when the macro kicked in and the lens was in the shot. Had no idea how to resolve that, so thank you for explaining how to turn macro off to avoid that.
Glad to be of help! They really should have more information about it, it's not the end of the world, as long as you know how to fix it. I suspect they avoid talking about it because it is such a downside of the lens.
Someone already suggested..but for you to be truly honest as on here, you might have to still do them on your own dime, yes do the other ones - Moment, Sandmarc, etc... may the lights be with you!
Yeah, no one has contacted me LOL. I think someone else is going to have to do it. To be really honest: I'm going back to my mirrorless and investing in a new Fuji body and a 70-300mm lens to get better wildlife shots. If you want what your phone doesn't offer, you have to go big or go home.
Yeah if you'll believe it, I had a Zhiyun Molus G60 on the way when I shot this, but it hadn't arrived yet! The scene with the mirror really wasn't part of the image quality testing, for what it's worth, I was just trying to demonstrate the mechanics of using the lens. For sure shooting into that random mirror isn't a good representation of the lens quality! Thanks for watching :)
You mean for the video recording? Yeah sure. I shot this in the default camera app but have switched to Blackmagic Camera for recording videos now, then locking the SS at 180 degree shutter angle. Won't make this add-on lens any better, but improves the choppiness of the video :)
Absolutely great video. Thanks for saving me money. It would be interesting to see comparisons with other phone lenses such as Sandmarc, Moment and Reeflex. Thanks.
You're welcome! I'd love to do a comparison with other lenses, since I suspect I might have been unfair to Shiftcam just 'cause all these lenses have similar issues once you dig into it. But I'm not going to buy them! I doubt I've endeared myself to the other companies enough for them to send me free samples, eh?
Hey thanks very much for putting up this review video. For a long time I always find "any extra" pieces of glass put in front of the lens will degrade the original lens quality and your video proof it right! Was about to get one but am so glad to see your video before I press the purchase button.
Nice video, worth searching for the 1% of people that will actually give honest options..... well done (I am returning the lens and iphone 15 pro max case (thanks for Amazon free returns)
Personally, I don't think it needs to "win", or that it ever will. I want to see it SUCCEED by attracting great people who are willing to put the work in to have valuable experiences free from corporate enshittification. That's what I was going for with this video. If someone is willing to spend 30 minutes watching a video about improving social media, they're already in a niche group that won't ever topple the dominant players.
Hey man, here's my sub for a really good job! PS: is there any telephoto lens that works for the iphone 15 pro? I need it to be sharp and to also work for portrait/cinematic modes. Thanks again!
Thanks! That's a really tough question. Honestly I think if you consider "Portrait mode" and "Cinematic mode" requirements, you aren't going to find anything that works reliably. It would have to not block the other lenses and/or LiDAR sensor, which would mean it was truly enormous and impractical. The best you can hope for is one that has significant benefits in terms of magnification/bokeh while maintaining sharpness. IMO the Beastgrip 1.7x lens is the most likely candidate for that, like I say at the end of my video, but I doubt Portrait/Cinematic modes will work with it either, because it still blocks the lenses you aren't using.
Interesting! Sorry to hear it's not working, my understanding was that almost all USB-C stuff would just work, but I guess you found a counter-example. You could try it in Blackmagic Cam just in case, since it lets you actively select the microphone, unlike the default iOS camera, though I'm not that hopeful, since it sounds like it's simply not recognizing it as a mic if it doesn't work in the default app automatically.
@@JerCantShutUp In Blackmagic app is even stranger, once I can see it in the list of audio sources available but when I click to select it, the mark signal goes back to "iPhone Mic" again... I'm trying contact with Hyperx
UPDATE: WAIT MAYBE IT DOESNT WORK: In my initial testing I had all short clips, because I was starting new videos each time I changed lens. I just tried recording something longer, and the video just shut off randomly. Once after 3 minutes and once after 7 mins (luckily I have a mirror to see the screen, since I was recording myself and wouldn't have noticed otherwise. My only conclusion is that this is caused by the microphone being powered by the phone! BUMMER!
@@JerCantShutUp thanks for the update! I didn't end up recording anything longer than a minute or two, I will have to try it out myself and report back. But I am sure I will end up with the same result. Seems like it might just be a software thing. They'll get there one day...
@@crispyticket Hey, thanks for reading my reply, I have more info! After I stopped using the mic (I instead plugged it into my laptop and recorded there, syncing afterwards), I found the video was still stopping randomly! I got to 11 minutes with one video and then it just stopped, I only noticed after a few more minutes, just awful. So it's very possible this is some bug with iPhone video recording in general, and not specific to the microphone, although so far it seems like whatever it is, it happens FASTER with the microphone attached, but that's with a sample of 3 recordings. In all cases, the battery was below 25% when this happened, so it's possible this is part of it. If you're going to record with the mic in your phone, try to get the phone topped up beforehand, it might help 🤷🏻♀ I'll report back again if I figure it out.
