Last updated on 2nd November 2025 by Sarah Sarsby
As a blogger and content creator, photography and videography are hugely important. Strong visuals can be the difference between a piece of content going viral or not.
I don’t come from a photography background, and I’m by no means an excellent photographer. However, I’ve taken plenty of photos and videoed a lot of Instagram content over the years, so I’ve learned quite a lot about lighting, lenses, layouts, and angles. I want photography kits that are easy to use, simple to set up, and deliver great results with minimal effort.
Today, I’m reviewing the SANDMARC macro lens kit, which is designed to work with iPhones to take beautiful, close-up photos. This kit consists of the Macro 100mm Lens and the Prolight Mini Kit.
This review covers whether the SANDMARC macro lens kit is a worthy investment and showcases results using the Macro 100mm Lens and Prolight Mini kit.
*This post contains some affiliate links. This means, at no extra cost to you, I earn some commission if you purchase a product through my link. All thoughts are my own, though, as always. Find out more on my affiliate disclosure page*
About the SANDMARC macro lens kit
The SANDMARC macro lens kit claims to be premium photography gear for iPhones, designed to capture detailed, rich, and vivid close-up shots.
According to SANDMARC, this macro lens kit is ideal for beauty creators, like me. The kit consists of:
- Macro 100mm Lens: A lens designed to capture stunning close-up details with a shallow depth of field, creating a natural, organic look. The lens connects using a custom mounting system — either a fitted phone case or clip mount — allowing for alignment and stability over the phone’s camera.
- Prolight Mini Kit: Compact, wireless LED lights (Bi-Colour and RGB) designed for creators who want precise control over lighting colour, brightness, and temperature. Perfect for portraits, product shots, and more. Both lights are dimmable from 1% to 100% and run for roughly 60–90 minutes at full brightness. They recharge via USB-C.
Together, the macro lens and mini LED lights are designed to give iPhone users more control over close-up photography and lighting conditions while remaining portable and simple to set up. It’s also a lightweight, compact, and portable kit, which is perfect for content creators on the go.
Overall, this lens kit costs $329.98 (USD)/£250.84 (GBP). Shipping to the UK costs $19.95 (USD)/£15.17 (GBP).
Setting up the macro lens kit
The SANDMARC macro lens kit is relatively easy to set up.
The Macro 100mm Lens comes with an iPhone case, where the lens can clip onto the back of the case where the iPhone’s camera is, or you can use the clip mount in the kit, which allows you to clip the macro lens directly onto your iPhone camera or case. I’ve got an iPhone 13 Pro, so I got the corresponding case. However, the lens didn’t clip onto the case properly, so the macro lens wouldn’t work with my iPhone’s camera. Instead, I found using the clip mount directly over my iPhone 13 Pro case gave me much better results.
Here’s what the SANDMARC Macro 100mm Lens looks like when I use the clip mount on my iPhone 13 Pro (below).
The Prolight Mini Kit comes with 2 rechargeable LED lights, which are easy to set up. You can either place them down in a fixed position or you can hold them and angle them specifically how you want to for the perfect shot.
SANDMARC also offers a Universal Mount Adapter so that you can fix the LED lights directly to your iPhone. Although I don’t own this, I think this would be great for instant lighting with your iPhone to illuminate whatever you’re trying to capture.
Honest SANDMARC review
I think the SANDMARC macro lens kit is good – but not outstanding – for taking detailed, close-up shots.
The kit doesn’t come with instructions for everything. While certain things, such as setting up the LED lights, are straightforward and intutive to use, I would’ve appreciated some simple instructions for slotting the 100mm macro lens onto the dedicated iPhone 13 Pro case or on the clip mount. To me, it wasn’t obvious which camera the SANDMARC lens should mount onto out of the 3 iPhone camera lenses. I also wasn’t certain how to use the clip mount. A look on the SANDMARC website gave me the answers I was looking for, but a simple user manual would’ve made this process smoother.
The clip mount is prone to moving slightly, and you can easily knock it out of position on your iPhone camera. However, it’s easy to readjust the lens when using the clip mount, so it’s no biggie.
Now for the important part: the 100mm macro lens results. The photos below were taken in the same conditions, at the same time, using the Prolight Mini Kit RGB LED light. Below, you can see the difference in my photos between using just my iPhone 13 Pro camera and the SANDMARC Macro 100mm Lens. These photos are completely unedited and have only been cropped.
As you can see, in both of the SANDMARC macro lens pictures, there is greater detail, depth of colour, and more clarity. Especially with the r.e.m. beauty highlighter balm, the shimmer particles are sharper, and you can see the various shimmer particle colours better.
However, I don’t think the results are so wildly different that the macro lens is a complete game-changer. Admittedly, though, this could be down to my photography skills.
Rating: 3 stars
Overall, I think the SANDMARC macro lens kit is decent. It’s easy to use, portable, and delivers reasonable results.
Having said that, I’m not blown away by the results. I don’t think there’s a big difference between just using my iPhone 13 Pro camera vs the SANDMARC photography kit. The iPhone 13 Pro case didn’t work with the macro lens at all, which rendered it useless. I also think some clearer instructions for setting up this kit would’ve been helpful.
The verdict: If you take a lot of close-up, detailed photos or videos, the SANDMARC macro lens kit would be handy. It’s fairly pricey, but you’d get the use out of it if you shoot a lot of content, particularly as the kit is portable. However, if you don’t take many close-up photos, you don’t need this kit. Regardless, I feel that this is a nice-to-have kit, rather than a must-have kit.
Sarah Sarsby is the owner of Honest Reviews Woman. With over 7 years' experience of writing in the fields of beauty and lifestyle, Sarah is passionate about all things content, makeup, skincare, wellness, and lifestyle. She has combination skin, is obsessed with lip gloss, and loves cookie dough.