A Thing of Beauty

I’m having the perfect Saturday. It’s quiet in the house, and nobody needs dropping off or collecting. Milo is up in Nottingham to see Liv this weekend, and Vanessa is working. I am free to potter to my heart’s content, which usually involves a walk, photography, and tinkering with various bits of camera gear or tech stuff. I woke up to bright sunshine and clear skies, but the clouds drew in again by mid-morning.

Another reason for the day’s perfection is that I have a new toy. After greatly simplifying my camera gear in 2022, I have been experimenting with and enjoying iPhone photography for a while now. One of the challenges has been finding the best way to make the most of the enormous variety of smartphone lenses available now—to get the best image quality and shooting experience while keeping the kit flexible and future-proof for when I change my iPhone. And to avoid the need to keep changing phone cases whenever I want to use a lens from a different manufacturer.

Enter the Beastgrip Pro, which landed on my desk yesterday after its journey across the pond. It’s rock solid, adaptable to fit any phone (even with the case on) and very modular in design, so you can easily dismantle and reconfigure the cage and lens mount. There’s a wonderfully industrial ugly beauty to it, as well, which really appeals to me. The Beastgrip lenses all seem to be extremely sharp, much more so than the Moment optics I had been using, and the Reeflex camera app is my new favourite, offering very easy manual control of the camera and excellent on-screen focus peaking. Happy days!