It has been ten years since Moment launched its original Kickstarter campaign for a pair of accessory smartphone lenses. As phone cameras started to shift to a wider field of view, the original lens mount was replaced with the M-Mount, which became something of an unofficial standard for other lens producers. As it turns out, history was doomed to repeat itself and modern smartphones have outgrown even that design; and today Moment is back with a brand new mount and redesigned lenses aimed at supporting future generations of smartphone cameras.
Moment is calling the new lenses T-Series — no, there’s no association with the popular recording label. The new mount has been designed with a 20% larger bayonet interface that can support larger camera sensors and apertures, and lens configurations with wider fields of view. This has become a necessity as many recent smartphone cameras, particularly from Android OEMs, have grown large enough that Moment’s previous M-Series mount could cause vignetting.
But these aren’t just a minor update, the optics have also been re-engineered with low dispersion fluorite optical glass to deliver sharper images edge-to-edge. According to Moment, the new lenses have an Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) score high enough to deliver clear detail to even the 108MP sensors in some phones.
Image Credit: Moment
Every one of the current M-Series lenses has been given a T-Series twin, so the lineup of focal ranges is essentially the same. There are eight new lenses in total, counting the blue and gold variants of the two anamorphic focal ranges:
- Tele 58mm (2x optical zoom)
- Wide 18mm
- Fisheye 14mm
- Macro 10x
- Blue and gold variants of the Anamorphic 1.33x
- Blue and gold variants of the Anamorphic 1.55x
As a consequence of increasing the bayonet size, the older M-Series lenses and mounts are incompatible with T-Series lenses and mounts. For anybody interested in upgrading, Moment is offering a trade-in program for the next 120 days. Customers are welcome to send in their M-series lenses (based on condition) for a store credit that can be used to purchase any T-Series gear.
Image Credit: Moment
Moment has also made it clear that Android has not been abandoned. At launch, there will be a Pixel 7 Pro case supporting T-Series lenses, and support will extend to Galaxy S24 cases when the phone ships early next year. For phones that aren’t supported directly through a case, Moment is also releasing a universal lens mount that makes it possible to precisely adjust a lens directly over your phone’s camera.
Moment also plans to continue offering M-Series lenses and cases for use with older phones (2022 and earlier). And in the case of iPhone users with cases that support Moment’s drop-in mounts, there will be new drop-in mounts available for both M-Series and T-Series lenses for future iPhone models.
Pre-orders open up today from Moment’s online store, and shipments are expected to begin on or around September 7th. Stay tuned as we’ll also have a review on Android Police once we have the new lenses in hand.
