Moment 240mm SuperTele vs. Tele 58mm Lens? Which One to Use?

It’s an exciting time at Moment.

We're dropping a bunch of brand new and updated lenses, and I think I've got some of the best ones to show you: the brand new 240mm SuperTele, and the #1 best-selling Tele 58mm.

I'm went to pick up a friend to test these lenses out. That friend is Dusty, and he's an incredible photographer. He shoots for Red Bull, GMC, and Sony, but lately he's gotten into wildlife photography, and he told me he found a family of owls not far from where we live.

"I feel underdressed," I told him, looking at all his camo.

We found the nest the owls are in, right up in that tree. But actually finding the owls turned out to be a completely different story. There are five of them total, and the parents have been flying off to find prey and feeding them on the rock nearby. It's kind of sweet.

The SuperTele 240mm

Moment's First Periscope Lens

What's wild about the SuperTele is that it's the first lens Moment has made that actually fits over the 4x lens on your camera. There's the 1x lens, the super wide lens, and the 4x lens, and the SuperTele isn't going to work on your 1x. It's designed for a periscope lens, so you'll need a Pro iPhone for it to work. I'll list all the compatible Pro iPhones below, because it's not all of them.

Attaching a Moment lens is simple: you put it onto the Moment mount, give it about a half twist, and it locks in. Once it's on, it's not coming off easily.

I personally like shooting in the Moment Pro Camera app, because you can hard switch your lens between 100mm and 200mm. Sometimes when you're shooting in the native camera app, it won't properly select the lens you've chosen. It just shoots out of the 1x camera, cropped in. The Pro Camera app solves that.

Plus, since Apple doesn't account for the fact that there's a lens on the front of your camera, touch focus doesn't always work well. In the Pro Camera app, you can switch to manual focus instead, which comes in handy when you're shooting wildlife or anything that needs a bit more precision. That's not to say you can't get good photos out of the native camera app, but the Pro Camera app gives you more control over your image.

If you're shooting photo, you probably don't need a tripod. If you're shooting video, you're going to need extremely stable hands, because at 400-plus millimeters, getting steady footage is tough. Or skip your morning coffee. Or just use a tripod and solve all your problems.

The SuperTele only works on the longest lens on your iPhone, acting more like a teleconverter, a tool that optically doubles the focal length of your camera's lens. Almost all Pro iPhones have a different focal length for their telephoto lens. I'm shooting on an iPhone 17 Pro, so this lens turns my 4x (100mm) into roughly 200mm, and the 8x (200mm) into 400mm. It basically just gives you a lot more reach.

With the native iPhone app, you can fake depth of field with portrait mode after the fact. But when you're using bigger glass like this, you get real depth of field and even some nice bokeh straight out of camera, which is great, especially if you're a beginner or just don't want to carry a full camera setup around. Look how much smaller this is compared to all the gear Dusty's hauling around. Have you seen his camera? That thing is huge.

The Tele 58mm

A Lighter, Sharper Update

iPhone cameras keep improving, and Moment's lenses are evolving right along with them, which means the lineup is getting updated too.

If you already have the original T-series Tele 58mm, there's nothing wrong with it, but if you're in the market to buy, the new version is going to be less expensive. I just got my hands on the Tele 58mm II this evening, and I think the image is sharper with more detail than from its predecessor. I'm told they're sharper edge to edge as well. We'll probably put together a proper comparison soon.

Still No Owls, But Plenty to Shoot

By 8 PM, we'd had maybe another hour of daylight left, and we still hadn't seen any owls at the tree. We did spot some other birds though, so we tried for those instead. One was sitting back in the reeds, dark against the lighter background, which at least gave us some contrast to work with.

While we waited, I asked Dusty why he gravitates toward the longer tele lenses. He told me that the more he shoots, the more he's drawn to the wide end, 16mm or 24mm, paired with a 600mm for the contrast in perspective. He said he can tell the story of an entire park with a wide or medium-wide shot, then turn around and use the long lens to hone in on one specific subject. It completely transforms how you see a place, and that's what he loves most about it.

Long lenses aren't just for wildlife either. You can shoot your kid's soccer game, other sports, whatever. Personally, I like shooting street photography with longer lenses too, since the perspective gets you a lot closer to your subject without actually being close to them.

The bird came back, so we tried to get the shot.

I also asked Dusty what the first lens he ever bought was. A 50mm 1.8, the classic "nifty fifty," because he wanted that depth of field without spending much money.

Looked like rain was coming in on the radar, so we kept moving.

That's when we found a woodpecker, and it had babies in the hole with it. I thought it was just a squirrel chirping nearby, but it turned out to be the woodpecker. We waited for it to pop its head out, probably ten minutes or so.

While we waited, I showed Dusty (and you) something new: if you want to add a filter to one of your Moment lenses, since these are a bit bigger than they used to be, you just unscrew the front element. There's now a step-up ring kit that lets you find the right size and screw it onto the front of your lens, so you can attach whatever filter you want.

Then more birds showed up, including one in the back that made us both stop. Nat Geo, baby. I don't think either of us actually got the shot, but it was a moment.

So, Which Lens Should You Get?

We came out for the owls and never found them, but we did find plenty of other wildlife, and I got some decent photos of Dusty along the way.

As for which lens is right for you: the 58mm is great if you want to shoot people, products, details, basically anything closer than what your 1x camera gives you. I personally love using it for portraits at 50mm. It won't distort your images, and you'll get nice separation and depth of field from the background.

The SuperTele, on the other hand, is wild, and I had a blast shooting with it tonight. It's perfect for wildlife, mountains, anything far away that you want to bring closer. I'm even thinking about trying it out for street photography, just to see a totally different perspective.

There's a whole lineup of new and updated lenses dropping from Moment this week. The team's been working hard on it, and there should be more long and short-form videos coming soon showing off all the new gear rolling out for summer.