Transforming Your Smartphone into a Powerful Microscope DIY Macro Photography Hacks

How To: Turn Your Smartphone into a 175X Digital Microscope for Incredible Macro Photos

If you're into photography, you're probably no stranger to the myriad of ways you can take macros with your smartphone. Your phone's built-in camera may not take great pictures up close, but you can modify it to do so with anything from a magnifying glass to a drop of water. However, those types of DIY macro lenses can only get so close.

Want to really get up close and personal with your subject so you can capture amazing images like these?

For about ten bucks, you can build a stand to turn your iPhone or Android into a digital microscope capable of magnification levels as high as 175x. It's even powerful enough to work in a laboratory setting to observe cells and take micrographs, as well as capture super detailed macro photos.

Instructables user Yoshinok built this digital microscope stand using a plywood base, a few pieces of plexiglass, a laser pointer focus lens, and some basic hardware components (nuts, bolts, etc.).

The assembly is pretty straightforward and shouldn't take much longer than 20 to 30 minutes. Yoshinok took apart the laser pointer to extract the lens, using a bobby pin and a piece of tape to attach it to the phone's camera.

Alternatively, you could probably get away with using a lens from a disposable camera, old DVD drive, or door viewer. And if you don't have any bobby pins, you could try wedging the lens in your case, or just attaching it with some Sugru. You can find more tips here.

The rest of the build consists of putting together the stand and drilling holes in the plexiglass for the lens and light source. Check out the video to see how it's done (the actual tutorial starts around 1:35).

For more details and step-by-step photos of the process, head over to Yoshinok's tutorial. You'll also find some more examples of the incredible macro photos he took using the setup. If you build one for yourself, be sure to upload your own images in the comments section below and let us know of any alterations to the concept.

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Tiny lens lets armchair scientists convert their smartphones into powerful microscopes

Yesterday, we talked about a new iPhone accessory lens that gives you an artsy look to your photos. Heres another add-on lens, but, instead of creative effects, its more scientific. With the new Micro Phone Lens, which is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter, you can turn your smartphone into a microscope that captures magnificently magnified views of super tiny things. Unlike most other smartphone accessory lenses, this one isnt your regular photographic lens that happens to feature a close-focusing macro mode. The Micro Phone Lens offers a staggering 150x magnification, which rivals full-fledged laboratory microscopes.

The tiny lens adhesively attaches to any smartphone or tablet lens, and, with the light source and specimen slides provided, turns any mobile device (with a sensor that resolves at least 5 megapixels) into a real microscope. To make achieving sharp images really simple, the lens is focused by pushing the slide containing the specimen slightly against it. The video below demonstrates how the Micro Phone Lens works on a tablet computers front camera.

The Micro Phone Lens was created by University of Washington graduate Thomas Larson, and is the result of more that two years of work that included the creation of a first, less powerful lens with 15x magnification. Besides seeking funding to produce the lens in significant numbers, Larson also has the vision that his Micro Phone Lens will be used at home to get kids excited about science; in schools so every student can have their own microscope; and as a portable device for field research or simply in places where cost or portability are a concern. The biggest draw could be its affordability.

Currently, the lens features a resolution of 2 microns, which Larson hopes to get down to about 1.5 microns in the final production version. In order to achieve this goal, Larson originally sought $50,000 in funding for his project, which the campaign has already surpassed, with another 15 days to go. This goes to show that there is an actual interest in his product.

If you could see yourself using the Micro Phone Lens in order to teach your kids about how a cell is structured, or just for the fun of it, you can still pledge. A $29 fund will buy you the lens and a small carrying case, while for $39 youll also get a portable LED light which you need to properly illuminate your specimen. Add 10 more bucks, and youll also get six prepared specimen slides plus 10 more to fill with specimen of your choice. The campaign continues through Friday, April 18, 2014.

(via dpreview Connect)

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How these tiny $17 lenses can turn your smartphone into a microscope

We use smartphones to talk, chat, play, and, by getting directions, explore the world we walk or drive through. Very soon, thanks to an Italian startup, we will also be able to use smartphones to explore the micro-world.

Smart Micro Optics, a spin-off from the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), has developed a set of two lenses called Blips that for 15 ($17) transform virtually any mobile device's camera into a digital microscope that can magnify subjects up to 30 times, or 80 times using the zoom.

That magnification means one can take high-resolution pictures or shoot videos of an insect as small as a dust mite or, with the help of a prepared slide, count the red blood cells in a blood sample.

"Our dream is to put a high-performance microscope in everyone's pocket, opening up opportunities for people to learn science or simply having fun in discovering firsthand the world at the micro-scale," Andrea Antonini, who co-founded Smart Micro Optics with his former IIT boss Tommaso Fellin, tells ZDNet.

The size of a lentil, Blips are, according to its creators, the thinnest microscope lenses for smartphones and tablets in the world, as they add just 1.5mm of thickness to the device.

Photos: These tiny $17 lenses can turn your smartphone into a microscope

As the patent-pending technologies behind Blips are still covered by secrecy, Smart Micro Optics declines to reveal many details about the materials and processes used in the lenses' production.

All they say is that they are made of various kinds of plastic, which provide a better refractive index than silicone, a material often used in other similar products already on the market.

With a top surface designed to be non-sticky to help the product remain dust-free and be easier to clean, the lenses adhere to the phone camera's glass through electrostatic attraction.

To further enhance the stability of Blips, two reusable bands of adhesive tape, designed to stick to any surface, are placed on the supporting flexible film. These bands increase the portability of Blips and, their creators hope, make them more useful.

" width="50"They can be permanently placed over the camera's lens or simply left attached to the back or front side of the phone ready for use," says Antonini, who has at least five Blips stuck to the rear of his Samsung S3.

Antonini, a physicist, started Smart Micro Optics while he was working at the department of Neuroscience and Brain Technologies at the IIT, where he researched how to apply nanostructure technologies to optics for neuroscientists.

"Smartphones were not what we were focusing on but I thought it could be fun to make something for everyday use out of what I was researching," he says.

Since the patent-pending technologies behind Blips were developed within the IIT, the institute holds the rights and allows the startup to use them for its commercial products in exchange for royalties on future revenues.

Smart Micro Optics is Antonini's second run as an entrepreneur. In the mid-2000s, he had set up a company dedicated to concentrated solar-power technologies, where he worked for six years. "I like it when you find a link between advanced research and business," he says.

So far, the company has not sought out venture capital or angel investors. It opted instead for the Kickstarter platform and a crowdfunding campaign that closed late last month. It raised 218,624 ($242,400) from 5,290 backers.

For about 15, users could pre-order a package with a pair of lenses: Blips Macro, which achieves a resolution of about eight microns that allows, for instance, high-resolution photos or videos of insects, and Blips Micro, which has a resolution that can be even less than four microns, making it good for observations that reach the cellular level.

"Before turning to investors we want to see how customers react to the product and create some buzz around the brand," Antonini says.

Read more about Italian tech

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