Recently, I found myself Googling “best iPhone fisheye lenses,” because I’ve been wanting to create some ‘90s-inspired videos for this summer. As a huge fan of the Beastie Boys’ music videos and Spike Jonze’s trademark skate films, I wanted a fisheye lens that could match the vibe of Sony’s beloved VX1000 camcorder. In the past, I’ve ordered smartphone fisheye lens attachments on Amazon, but it seemed that anything I got turned out to be cheaply made and just didn’t work well. But viola! My Google search came to an end when I found the Death Lens by Death Digital for $45.

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What is the Death Lens?

The Death Lens website was easily laid out and I immediately learned what this company’s MO was — like me, the creators of the Death Lens wanted a tasteful nod to the past that worked seamlessly with modern day smartphones.

Death Digital’s website says: “In our past, a group of five or more would share a VX1000 and legit fisheye setup. The struggle to get footage and share footage was difficult to say the least. Now we hope to pay our struggle forward by providing a lens that anyone can afford and anyone can use with their very own cell phone.”Featuring endorsements from skate legends including Andrew Reynolds, Don “The Nuge” Nguyen, and Beagle, I knew this lens had to be legit. Also, I noticed the product had been around for a few years and by this point was thoroughly tested. Above all, the glass looked nice and videos on Death Lens' Instagram and videos uploaded by YouTubers looked dope.

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I was sold and decided to take the plunge, a $45 price tag was slightly above what I’ve paid in the past for smartphone fisheye attachments, but I wanted a lens that would finally be my end-all-be-all for all of my fisheye needs. I put in an order and within six days the Death Lens arrived at my Brooklyn apartment.

Unboxing the Death Lens Fisheye

Opening the box, I noticed how cool the custom packaging was. I thought to myself, OK this company is taking their fisheye game super seriously, even boasting the phrase “widest iPhone fisheye system available anywhere.” The instruction booklet was minimal, with the two main takeaways as 1) All users must download their custom Death Lens app to work in tandem with the lens, and 2) Carefully use a firm “pinch grip” to hold your smartphone, so your fingers don’t get in the shot. OK, easy enough.

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For starters, each Death Lens comes with a smartphone case — when ordering, you select your smartphone’s size. It’s this custom case that you screw your Death Lens into, which provides much added stability instead of just clipping a lens on your smartphone. After snapping the case on my iPhone 13 Mini — it’s a little tight — I screwed the lens on and downloaded the app. Boom, I was good to go. Mimicking the interface of an OG camcorder, I quickly learned that Death Digital’s app is super easy to use. Even though it’s simple, it has everything a user would need to experiment with their new fisheye.

Going to the settings menu, the options on the app for recording include: square, classic, or HD (giving you the options for 4K, 1080, or 720). I wasn’t really into square mode, but I see how this would be cool for users making Instagram-specific videos. HD was fun, but I found it to be way too hi-fi for what I wanted, so I kept the app in classic mode, which looked respectfully vintage. Besides resolution, there’s a steady cam feature that’s useful while filming skaters or other fast-moving subjects. I kept the steady cam mode toggled off, as I knew I’d mostly be pretty still while filming for this assignment. There’s even a little retro battery meter for your smartphone’s battery within the app, keeping with the old school vibe. Lastly, there’s a white balance option, but I just kept this on auto for the sake of filming continuity.

This may sound basic, but one of the coolest things about the app is that you can choose to save your fisheye videos either to your smartphone’s library or to the app’s own separate library. Since I was filming a lot of short clips, this option proved useful for cataloging my fisheye videos and keeping them separate from the rest of my iPhone’s videos.

Death Lens is the smartphone fisheye lens that finally gets it right