Your iPhone camera is already one of the better mobile cameras available, but a new accessory from imaging technology leader DxO could up the iPhone’s game considerably. The Lightning-enabled DxO ONE has a super bright f1.8 aperture lens, and a 20.2 megapixel, 1-inch sensor. That sensor size is on par with the Sony RX100 series of compact camera, which produces amazing pictures in terms of image quality and noise in a small-body device, and should enable great effects like truly dramatic background blur.
The DxO ONE is even smaller than the RX100, however – it’s roughly as tall as your iPhone 6 is wide, and only about an inch thick. The camera can swivel around the Lightning port, turning your iPhone into basically a swivel LCD display, and it can capture RAW files, meaning you’ll have lots more flexibility with the finished product in terms of editing with programs like Adobe Lightroom.
The DxO ONE has manually adjustable aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings, complete with the kinds of picture modes you’d see on a DSLR or micro four-thirds camera, and it can also capture video at 1080p/30fps, or at 720p/120fps for slow-motion effects. There’s a microSD card built-in for storage, and you can directly capture to your iPhone’s Camera Roll, too.
Here are some sample shots provided by DxO:
This sounds like an amazing addition to any hobbyist photographer’s kit, and at $599, it retails for around what you’d expect to pay for a similarly equipped standalone camera (in a much smaller package). The RX100 IV is $1,000, for comparison, and while this has limitations like the fixed 32mm equivalent lens, it still sounds like an amazingly cool accessory.
The DxO ONE is available for pre-order on dxo.com, and is expected to begin shipping in the U.S. in September.
