Dark corners caused by Moment wide lens

[photo_abc]

Hello, I bought the Moment wide lens and the Moment Case for my iPhone 6s Plus. When I first used the product, I noticed that there were dark corners on the photos. I contacted them and they asked me to check to make sure that I installed the lens correctly. I did and they replied as following:

"Thanks for getting in touch. The reason you are seeing slight distortion is because the wide angle lens is exceptionally wide so the corners tend to vignette a bit. Your photos look very normal to me for the amount of vignette you are experiencing. Usually we are more concerned when we see full on dark sharp corners of black which usually comes from the misalignment of the lens to the case. Since the iPhone's camera is already a cropped sensor, when a wide angle lens is applied the two elements stacked together will cause slight distortion. Hopefully one day phones will be made so that we can remove the lens on the camera and mount our lenses, lens to sensor directly. That is why you don't see this issue with the tele or the macro because the focal point is farther out. I hope this helps clarify your concern. You can take a look at some sample images here from our Momentist publications which feature some wide angle shots that you can notice have the normal amount of lens vignetting as well. Please let me know if you have any more questions I can help you with!"

The photos I sent to them do not look "very normal" at all. They claimed that the lens is edge to edge clear. It is not. What do you think? Is there other product doing better than this?

View image: Dark corners

 

[weepete]

It's normal to see some vingetting on wide angles at small apertures with cheap lenses. This doesn't look too bad for what it is though, I think you are expecting too much from this product.

I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with stick on lenses for phones, but I'd suggest that if you want better quality shots with interchangable lenses it would be better to move to a DSLR or mirrorless system.

 

[Watchful]

Its a phone... The camera is a secondary feature, not the main one. My friend was trying to use his iPhone to get shots of toner boxes to check with the supplier about some different lables. He couldn't get a good shot because of low ligjt and a glossy label made the flash overpower it. I took the shot with my android and they were perfectly readable.
Maybe try different phone and lens combination. They are not all the same.
Zeiss has some nice clipons.

 

[photo_abc]

In practice, how the Moment wide lens compared with those made by Olloclip and iPro? Do the Olloclip and iPro wide lens also have this issue?

I don't see dark corners in photos taken by iPro lens.
iPro Lens System

 

[Watchful]

Buy it, try it, if you find defects, return it and try the next.

 

[photo_abc]

If I were in the US, I would have done that. The problem is I am abroad at the moment. They don't refund the shipping costs and I have to pay to ship the products back to the US.

 

[407370]

I use my phone camera quite a bit and have used several add on lenses. The wide angle or fisheye lenses for phones do tend to be a bit low quality but I found a set made by Lifetrons (75 Euro)that I think works well. All of the below were taken by them:

 

[photo_abc]

Thanks. Do you have samples with light corners? Perhaps photo of a piece of white paper?

 

[photo_abc]

Is there any software that can do a good job at automatically removing those dark corners? I am not skill enough to do it manually and beautifully in PS.

 

[Watchful]

Photoshop can do it automatically as can Paintshop Pro and other software.

 

[407370]

Thanks. Do you have samples with light corners? Perhaps photo of a piece of white paper?

I dont have pics of white paper but in the middle picture above you can see some vignetting but the other 2 you cant. Top is with a macro, middle / bottom is with the wide angle.

 

[photo_abc]

In Photoshop CS6, which function do you recommend? Given my situation, shall I keep the lens or pay for shipment again to return it?

 

[photo_abc]

Do you recommend keeping the lens or pay for international shipment and return it to the company for a partial refund?

 

[Braineack]

My >$1000 lenses vignette in the corners...

It's almost impossible not to with wide-angle adapters.

 

[dannylightning]

some lenses will do that and other weird things too , even really nice lenses. most of the time you can get rid of it with something like lightroom and allot of people will ad a vingette effect to the photos because it helps draw your eyes to the center of the photo..

so unless its doing it extremely bad its probably nothing to worry about or nothing that you cant fix by editing the photo..