I’m a relative novice when it comes to photography, but I really wanted to try out the Easy-Macro Lens band after learning about about them from their successful Kickstarter campaign. I still like to be creative with my DSLR camera and even my iPhone, and while I’m not ready yet to invest in a fancy (read: expensive) macro lens that’s designed to take super-close up photos, it seemed like a great intro to macro photography for me.

This is a good-quality macro lens that’s affixed to a thick, stable rubber band. You keep it on a card in your wallet or handbag (or you can wear it like a bracelet) and simply slide it over your phone’s camera lens when you’re ready to take a photo. It’s a great idea and works surprisingly well.

To use the macro lens, you have to be very, very close to the object you’re photographing. And it needs to be very, very small. But the results are impressive.

Just for comparison, here is a picture of my rug taken with my iPhone 5, next to one taken with the Easy-Macro Lens band strapped on. For such a basic lens, I’d say the ability to capture that level of detail is really pretty amazing.

While it’s no Sony Lens Cam, the fact that all of these pictures were taken directly with a smartphone kind of blows me away.

The Easy-Macro lens is compatible with most iOS and Android devices, including tablets. But if it gets stretched out too far, you’ll have to wait a while for it to shrink back to the right size to fit your phone again, so you might want to consider whether you need this for your phablet (or how much you use it for photography in the first place). That said, I stretched mine pretty far and it didn’t tear, but the company has a good replacement policy for bands that do break.

I did have some challenges with my phone focusing and refocusing while using the lens, which made it difficult for me to get a shot that wasn’t blurry. But if you’re not a pro, and you just want to play around with macro photography, for a mere $15 the Easy-Macro band is an inexpensive and surprisingly good option.

Find the Easy-Macro Lens band for $15 at Easy-Macro.com. Thanks to the company for sending us one for review.