$35 superzoom lens on a smartphone: is it even worth buying?

You know how many photographers say that gear doesn’t matter and that the story is more important than the gear you use? YouTuber Casey Neistat has made one of the most ridiculous (but pretty fun) comparisons between two pieces of gear. In this video, he tests a crappy $35 smartphone zoom lens against a $1,000 Sigma zoom lens. Can they even compare?

Casey points out that “the story you tell is always more important than what you use to tell it.” After all, even Steven Soderbergh filmed an entire movie on a smartphone. In the video, Casey compares the incomparable. In the right corner, there’s the $35 lens attached to a Google Pixel 2 XL phone. In the left corner, there’s what looks like a $1,000 Sigma 150-600mm paired with a $6,000 Canon 1DX Mark II.

Here are a couple of examples:

Of course, you can’t really compare a crappy smartphone zoom lens with 30 times more expensive camera lens. But, if you need an 18x zoom while shooting with a phone, then maybe, just maybe, you could experiment with something like this.

[$35 vs. $7,000 SUPERZOOOOM | Casey Neistat]