The Lensbaby LM-10 ($69.95) is an add-on lens for smartphones that captures images with what's become known as the Lensbaby Effect—a sharp center area surrounded by extreme blur. It attaches to your phone with the help of magnets and an adhesive still disc and works with a free app that allows you to move the sweet spot around, adjust exposure, and record video. It's a lot of fun, and relatively inexpensive, but the magnetic system causes problems when used in conjunction with the iPhone 6 Plus. If you don't use a 6 Plus, and enjoy the look of Lensbaby images, it's a highly recommended add-on for your phone.

Design and Features

The LM-10 ( at Amazon)  itself is a small tube, roughly 1.5 inches in height and less than in inch in terms of diameter. It's light, just 0.8-ounce, and includes magnetic connections on both sides. Its symmetrical optical design means that you won't have to worry about which is the entrance pupil and which is the exit pupil; it can attach in either orientation. A lens cap, with elastic connecting the front and rear covers and a small string that makes it easy to attach the LM-10 to a keychain, is included in the package, as is an alcohol wipe for cleaning the surface of your phone around the lens, and a set of adhesive discs.

You'll need to place one of the discs around your smartphone's rear camera lens before getting started with the LM-10. The discs fit around the lens of most Android smartphones, as well as the iPhone 4S, 5, 5S, 5C, 6, and 6 Plus. Lensbaby also makes a removable mount for select iPhones; for $9.95 you can get one that's compatible with the iPhone 5/5S, 6, or 6 Plus. The mount is a good alternative to using the discs, as it's easily removable and its design ensures that it's perfectly centered around the lens.

I tested the LM-10 with one of these chips and the iPhone 6 Plus. As much as I love the look of the images and video that it's able to capture, I can't recommend the LM-10 if you're an iPhone 6 Plus owner. It includes an optical stabilization system that's absent from other iPhones, and magnets can seriously interfere with it. It didn't happen all the time, but there were several occasions where I mounted the LM-10 on the 6 Plus and the stabilization system simply went crazy, moving the sensor around erratically. I don't know if this is something that can do permanent damage to a phone, but it's not a risk I recommend taking. Nor does Apple; it released a support document that advises against using magnetic lens attachments with the iPhone 6 Plus.

But if you've got almost any other modern smartphone, you've got no worries in regards to the magnets. The free Lensbaby app for iOS and Android (it requires Jelly Bean at a minimum) is required to make use of the LM-10. The app includes a number of controls, including a slider on the left that adjusts sharpness (available on iOS only), white balance lock, rule of thirds grid overlay toggle, spot metering toggle, contrast adjustment, and focus lock.

When shooting stills you have two options for an angle of view. The centered sweet spot covers a wide angle of coverage, but doesn't give you any control over where the area of sharpness is, other than moving the camera. Double tapping the screen switches to an adjustable sweet spot. The field of view is narrowed, but you're able to frame images with off-center compositions when using it in this way. There were times that I wanted to move the spot a little further to the edge of the frame but the app wouldn't let me; some cropping after capture is required in those situations. The app also supports video recording. You're locked into using a centered sweet spot when recording video.

Snow falling in the Bloomfield Cemetery. #iphone6plus #Lensbaby #lm10 @seeinanewway #cemetery #graveyard_dead @graveyard_dead

A video posted by Jim Fisher (@jamespfisher) on Mar 1, 2015 at 1:40pm PST

The app is light on filters; it just includes Monochrome and Sepia. You can use any app on your smartphone if you want to give images a filtered look—I tend to use VSCO Cam for still images destined for Instagram, but stick to Instagram's built-in filters when posting a video clip. And, if you really want to, you can always copy images from your phone to your home computer and edit using Lightroom or another photo workflow application, but the LM-10 is more geared toward mobile photographers living in a smartphone ecosystem.

Conclusions

I'm a fan of the Lensbaby look when used for the right photo. The LM-10 delivers the same look as a Lensbaby SLR lens and optic pair, like the Composer Pro ($340.76 at Amazon) and Sweet 50 Optic ($119.95 at Amazon) , but it does it with your phone's camera and for a lot less money. You do lose some versatility—you can't narrow the aperture of the LM-10 to increase the size of the sweet spot as you can with an SLR Lensbaby—and a smartphone camera is no match for an SLR int terms of image quality.

Whether you're a smartphone photographer who has longed to capture images with the unique viewpoint that a Lensbaby provides, or a seasoned Lensbaby SLR shooter with a desire to get the same look from your smartphone, the LM-10 is an excellent add-on lens for your smartphone. I do recommend getting a mounting clip if you have an iPhone; it only adds $10 to the price and seems a bit more secure than the adhesive discs that ship with the LM-10. iPhone 6 Plus users should take a pass on the LM-10 due to the interference it can cause to the phone's optical image stabilization system. That's a downer, as the 6 Plus's big screen is great for photo editing. But if you've got any other compatible phone, I recommend the LM-10 highly.

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