The iPhone’s Portrait mode uses computational photography to simulate the shallow depth of field of a digital SLR or mirrorless camera with a larger sensor. It’s evolved from a very crude tool into something which is now pretty convincing, but it’s still no substitute for the real thing.
There are some circumstances in which you can get genuine shallow-ish depth of field with an iPhone shot, but these are very limited as we’ll discuss. The Sandmarc 2x telephoto lens is a much more practical way to get true optical blurring when shooting portraits …
Your quick primer on depth of field
Depth of field is a way of describing how much of your photo is in focus. Sometimes we might want the entire photo in focus, while other times we might want a wafer-thin focal plane. Let’s use a couple of digital SLR shots to illustrate.
In this first case, I wanted everything in focus from the leaves of the tree just a few feet in front of me right the way through to the opera house and bridge around half a mile away. I therefore used a narrow aperture of f/16 to create a very deep focal plane. This is pretty similar to the default depth of field you’ll get from an iPhone.
Contrast with this shot where I’ve shot at f/1.4 so that only the closest eye is fully in focus and even her hand, just a foot or so behind, is completely blurred. This is something completely impossible on an iPhone.
Achieving a depth of field this shallow was only possible because I was shooting on a full-frame camera with a very fast (wide aperture) lens.
The limitations of Portrait mode
What Portrait mode on the iPhone does is to simulate shallow depth of field by computationally figuring out what is in the foreground and then artificially blurring the background. In recent years, it even simulates a gradual fall-off of focus as things get progressively further away from the camera.
I’ve grown increasingly impressed with this over the years, especially since it started supporting night shots too. However, it’s far from perfect, sometimes delivering what looks like a green-screen cutout effect.
Even when the result looks natural on an iPhone screen, you generally can’t make large prints from Portrait mode photos without seeing noticeable glitches. For that reason, it’s always preferable to get true optical shallow depth of field.
Natural bokeh
One of the factors that helps create shallower depth of field is a longer lens. When Apple boosted the telephoto to a 5x lens, we started to see natural bokeh pretty much for the first time.
The problem, however, is that you can only take portraits with a 5x or 8x lens if you can get a long way away from the subject. Even then, you are limited to this kind of close-up, as the bokeh very quickly reduces as you back up even further to capture more than just head-and-shoulders.
Enter the Sandmarc 2x Telephoto lens
This is the problem the Sandmarc 2x Telephoto lens is designed to solve.
Like the macro lens I tested last week, you can either use the supplied clip to attach the lens to your iPhone, or you can buy the company’s iPhone case. Since I’m using several Sandmarc lenses, I opted for the case, and I’ll simply quote what I said about that last time – along with the look & feel of the lens itself, as my comments would be identical.
I generally use dedicated iPhone cases for accessories with some reluctance as I tend to have a preferred case of my own. However, in this particular, uh, case, I found that it was good enough to leave on my iPhone permanently. It’s fully compatible with MagSafe charging and accessories.
It has a matte finish which offers a very secure grip, and the metal buttons offer a very positive and reliable clicky experience. The camera bump is obviously a little deeper to allow space for the screw threads for the lenses, but to my eyes has a pleasantly industrial look.
The lens itself looks like a very generic camera lens. There is quite distinctive white lettering on the side, which some might find distracting, but is helpful if you have more than one iPhone lens.
In use
The telephoto lens attaches to the main camera lens, which is 24mm. That effectively turns it into a 48mm lens, which is very close to the 50mm lens which SLR photographers refer to as a “nifty fifty” because it is a very flexible focal length.
This includes being at the lower end of the typical 50-90mm range we would normally use for portrait photos, and I’ve certainly shot plenty of portraits using a 50mm lens.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you are going to get very shallow depth of field with this lens, but it does provide enough background separation for typical portrait shots, even in quite a busy city environment.
Sample shots
I started with a deliberately tough test: an extremely cluttered background with several layers to it. This includes a mesh fence only around 15 feet away and a tilted metal sculpture about 20 feet behind the subject. With a standard iPhone shot, this would just be a horrible mess. However, the lens gives sufficient separation for Pippa to stand out from all the background elements.
You can see the way the focus gradually falls off as we look in turn at the pier, the bridge, and the buildings on the far side of the river.
While we wouldn’t deliberately choose a composition as cluttered as this, there are times when we just get a second to grab a spontaneous shot, and don’t get any control over the background.
There isn’t as much separation from the sculpture as I would ideally like, but it’s still good enough for this kind of impromptu shot
Once we position Pippa with a more distant background, then the effect is very pleasing indeed.
There is a way to ‘cheat’ with iPhone shots, which is to get very close to the person you’re photographing. The closer you get to the subject, the more background blurring you’ll get. However, where that plan falls apart is where you want to get a wider shot but still have enough separation from the background. This shot, for example, just wouldn’t be possible without an accessory lens. We can only get away with the lampposts emerging from her head because they are blurred.
Check out other sample shots in the gallery below (click or tap each one to enlarge).
Pricing and conclusions
The Sandmarc Telephoto 2x Lens Edition, to give it its full name, costs $159.99.
That’s not a trivial price for an iPhone accessory. Indeed, it’s more expensive than a typical DSLR 50mm lens, although the price of those is only low because they are such a popular focal length and are sold in their millions, leading to massive economies of scale.
My view is that the purchase would make sense for two target markets. First, keen iPhone photographers and videographers who regularly shoot people and are using their Apple device as a primary or only camera. For this market, it adds a huge amount of performance and utility for a relatively affordable cost.
Second, anyone who uses an iPhone as a supplementary camera for a DSLR or filmmaking rig. In this context, the cost is pretty trivial and means that a C-camera becomes significantly more flexible.
There is a potential third market in the form of parents who take lots of photos of their kids. My test here would be whether you either print them or display them on a large photo frame, as that’s where the limitations of the artificial Portrait mode tend to show up. If you’re happy viewing photos of your kids on your iPhone or iPad, then you can probably stick to Portrait mode.
In my own case, I found that the iPhone is a fantastic camera for run-and-gun B-roll footage, and I do expect this lens to really assist with these shoots.
The Sandmarc Telephoto 2x Lens Edition is available for $159.99 from the company’s website.
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