That's a great idea! I actually used to do something similar before I went case-less. I had an Otterbox and I would slip the lens under the rubber exterior but over the plastic shell. I think that your idea would work perfectly, especially with a dedicated back shell.



As far as Christmas light bokeh, I hadn't ever thought of doing that technique, so I decided to try and figure out a way to do it without any photo-editing applications. The reason why we can't achieve that technique with the stock camera is because the phone is set to have a large depth-of-field. It's focusing in on the entire scene, which is also why it has a hard time focusing in on subjects that are close to the lens. Since we can't control the size of the aperture (we would need a larger aperture - small f-stop to narrow the depth-of-field), I had to manage a way to change the focus to the foreground. In order to do this I used a less powerful macro lens I had salvaged from a telephoto lens. Hope you like the pictures, and thanks for the challenge!