Cell Phone Microscopy

micro phone lens packaging
and case

In my pursuit of portable microscopy I came across this product initially funded through Kickstarter. The micro phone lens is a small plastic disc that sticks to a cell phone's camera lens, turning it into a 15X microscope. I had to try it out and I thought it would be worth the $15 experiment. 

Case with lens in the
lower lefthand corner. 

The lens comes in a small container with an eye-catching black and white design on the top. It is great that the whole setup is so portable, but I am in a constant state of nearly loosing it. I have set my phone down, forgetting to have the lens facing up, only to have the lens come off as I picked up my phone. I have dropped it on the floor covering it in dust. And last night I completely forgot to take the lens off when I was finished and found it stuck on the kitchen table when I went to eat my cereal and read my morning dose of The Economist. Maybe it was just a forgetful and slightly klutzy episode of microscopy, but you get the idea. Beware of loosing this small disc that is slightly larger than the O on your keyboard! Fortunately the lens is also quite resilient. It is bendable and can be easily cleaned with water. 

Let me show you what this little lens can do. I pulled out a dried lichen that I collected on a drive into the California coast range. It is the lace lichen, Ramalina menziesii, aptly named for the lacy filaments that increase the surface area of this lichen, enabling it to better absorb moisture and nutrients from the air. 

Ramalina menziesii the lace lichen

I took the photos below with the micro phone lens stuck to my Nokia Lumina 928 cell phone. The lens requires a camera with at least a 5 megapixel camera and mine is 8.7 megapixels. The center of the photos is in crisp focus, but I was disappointed that the field of view is so small and that parts of the lichen near the edge of the image are thus out of focus. The demo on the website has the entire field of view in focus. That video was taken with a tablet whereas mine were with a phone, so it could be that the interaction between the lens and my phone optics are the issue. 

An even closer view of the lace lichen

Up close with the lace lichen

The other issue I had was stabilizing the camera and taking a photo at the same time. The instructions online recommend using the lens case as a platform for the phone when taking photos. This works pretty well, but I ended up needing to tip my phone to adjust the distance to the sample I was looking at since it wasn't sitting flush against the table.

This company is also in the process of developing a 150X lens and just had another successful Kickstarter project to fund it. After my experience with the 15X lens I think I will hold off on purchasing the higher magnification one. More magnification means a smaller depth of field and I think that the 15X lens is reasonably challenging to focus. I bet that the 150X will be even more difficult. I will wait until some reviews come out before jumping on that one. 

Lily flower

Another plant I examined was a lily that I got in a bouquet from the farmer's market on Saturday. Specifically I zoomed in to take a look at the the pollen-covered anthers.

Anther

The 15X lens gets us significantly closer to the pollen than my cell phone camera can without assistance. Still a small field of view, but all-in-all reasonably good for a 15 dollar addition to my magnification arsenal.  

The pollen up close and personal.