The Lensbaby Creative Mobile Kit ($89.95) is the company's second crack at making an add-on lens kit for smartphones. It's a little more expensive than the LM-10 Sweet Spot Lens that we reviewed earlier this year, but the add-on lenses are smaller, and don't cause magnetic interference when paired with the iPhone 6 Plus. Each lens is a lot of fun in its own way, but the app needs some work. Frequent crashes when saving pictures—which causes images to be lost forever—put a damper on this kit, but thankfully you don't have to use Lensbaby's software at all.

Design
If you have an iPhone 5 or newer, you can buy the Creative Mobile Kit along with a small plastic clip that fits snugly around your phone's camera. If you use an older iPhone or an Android phone, you'll need to stick the included metal ring (backed with adhesive) to your phone. When using the clip, take care not to slide the lens in all the way—that actually makes it a bit off center, and you'll get darkened corners at one side of your image. The actual center point is just a little shy of being fully clipped on.

Each of the included lenses—the LM-20 Sweet Spot and the LM-30 Reflective Circle—has a magnetic mounting ring incorporated into its design. When I used the LM-10 Sweet Spot lens with my iPhone 6 Plus (which mounts in a similar fashion) I had issues with the optical stabilization system suddenly shaking about. That issue didn't pop up with the LM-20 or the LM-30, even when I tried to reproduce the phenomenon. I'd say that Lensbaby has fixed this issue, so iPhone 6 Plus owners can give this kit a look. It's possible that the magnet is not quite as strong, as both lenses are noticeably squatter than the LM-10.

In addition to the lenses, a kickstand is included. It's a fine add-on that allows you to set your phone down on a table to FaceTime or Skype using the front camera, and it's able to be used in conjunction with either of the add-on lenses. I rarely used it, though, because as soon as I was done capturing a Lensbaby shot I put my phone back in its protective case—the nature of the add-on clip precludes you from using it with most protective cases. I would have preferred if Lensbaby had released its own protective case, with an integrated mount, like the one used by the iPro lens system.

Lenses and App
The LM-20 replicates the look of classic Lensbaby optics. It captures images with a sharp center point of focus—the Sweet Spot—surrounded by blur. That's the same thing that the LM-10 does, but the LM-20 has a larger area of focus. It's an effect that goes a long way to set your images apart from the typical smartphone shot.

The second lens, the LM-30 Reflective Circle, captures images that are sharp in the center and surrounded by reflections. The prismatic effect is certainly unique, and is one that can be really interesting when paired with video capture. Each lens includes a front and rear cap, connected with strong thread.

The prismatic lens from the #Lensbaby mobile kit can be a lot of fun for video. #njsf2015 #seeinanewway @seeinanewway #iphone6plus

A video posted by Jim Fisher (@jamespfisher) on Jul 31, 2015 at 8:30pm PDT

Lensbaby provides its own camera app for use with the lenses. It needs some work. Some functions are obvious—like the shutter release, white balance adjustment, and orientation flip—but others are represented by puzzling icons, and there's no online help guide for the app. As best as I can tell, the top circle adjustment adds a vignette to images, the aperture icon engages exposure lock, and the slider launched by what appears to be a folded piece of paper adjusts image sharpness. That's not the real problem with the app, though. At press time, the current version—2.0—crashes, and it crashes frequently. Crashes often occur after an image is captured, and when the app crashes under this circumstance, it doesn't save the image you just captured. I often had to reboot my phone in order to stop the app from crashing.

That would normally be a deal breaker, but thankfully both lenses in this kit work just fine with the  standard iPhone camera app. The only thing you'll need to be careful of is autofocus—you don't want the phone to focus on a blurry part of the Sweet Spot lens, so use the tap-to-focus function and make sure you tap the center area of the frame. Hopefully Lensbaby will fix its app via a future update.

Conclusions
I'd be rating the Lensbaby Creative Mobile Kit a bit higher if wasn't for the issues with the app. But the frequent crashes are certainly a concern, because even though you can use the lenses with any of your phone's camera apps, focus can be an issue. And it'd be a plus if Lensbaby released a series of protective phone cases that worked along with the lenses, as there's always a tinge of fear when I'm using my phone without one. But if you're willing to use your native camera app and be careful of where the autofocus point is set, you'll find that both the LM-20 and LM-30 lenses are capable of capturing compelling images and video that are quite different than what typical smartphone cameras can manage.